I recognise clearly that my little volumes have been received with so much favour, because, in spite of their simplicity and their lack of scientific importance, they are, so far as they go, original. That is to say, I have not much to give, but what I have is of my own gathering. I have not borrowed from other and cleverer writers, but have set down as plainly as I could what I have myself observed and experienced.
It is my privilege to be unusually well placed for the minute study of living creatures, and in that study I find a pleasure so intense that I long to attract others to the same well-spring of pleasure. Unpretending as are the chronicles of the inmates of my house and garden, they are scrupulously true, and every fact that a veracious observer records is a contribution, however small, to our general sum of knowledge.
It only remains to say that a few of these chapters have appeared in Nature Notes and in The Girl’s Own Paper. The rest are now printed for the first time.
ELIZA BRIGHTWEN.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| [LEMURS] | 15 |
| [TOMMY AND PEARLIE] | 27 |
| [MUNGO] | 39 |
| [SQUIRRELS] | 51 |
| [FAIRY] | 57 |
| [ASNAPPER] | 73 |
| [WILLOW-WRENS] | 83 |
| [TAME DOVES] | 91 |
| [FEEDING BIRDS] | 103 |
| [STARVING TORTOISES] | 115 |
| [TEACHING CHILDREN] | 127 |
| [STUDYING NATURE] | 139 |
| [INSECT OBSERVATION] | 153 |
| [SOLITARY BEES AND WASPS] | 165 |
| [DRONE FLIES] | 191 |
| [THE PRAYING MANTIS] | 201 |
| [THE CORK MOTH] | 211 |
| [THE CLOTHES MOTH] | 219 |
| [THE DEATH-WATCH] | 231 |
| [CHEESE-MITES AND FLIES] | 237 |
| [LEPISMÆ] | 245 |
| [POT-POURRI] | 255 |
| [A WATER BOUQUET] | 265 |
| [ARTISTIC PITHWORK] | 271 |