Part 6

The book consists of over five hundred pages octavo, closely printed, and arranged so as to constitute a convenient and exhaustive encyclopedia of the birds of this country and their nests and eggs. Although the title of the book would lead one to think the matter does not pertain to the habits of the birds, nor their appearance, it is more complete in this respect than many books written ostensibly to describe the birds themselves, and in many of its articles almost complete life histories are to be found. The nesting habits and the hatching of the eggs have led the author on till the work has become a very readable one for those who are by no means specialists on eggs and nests. The writer has modestly disclaimed attempting to cover so much ground and refers his readers to the works of Coues and Ridgway for further particulars.

The numbers of those who do not let a summer pass without looking into the lives of the birds which visit their country residences are rapidly growing, and this growth of interest on the part of thousands who do not wish to become experts but desire to enjoy their feathered neighbors and their products most fully, has made room for a large sale of this work. It has but to become known to be possessed by all cultured households where trips to the country are annually made.

To know the birds of one's locality by name and to be able to identify their nests and watch their doings with some degree of intelligence is an accomplishment which many desire and are annually attaining. With this work in one's possession few birds can remain in the vicinity without being identified. The gladness and loss of selfish thoughts and motives that are the reward of all those who lose their hearts to the birds and their growing families do far more good in the world than any amount of drugs and dieting.

Few people go to the country without having something they wish to gain in the way of health. A prescription of bird life taken regularly before meals has been found one of the greatest cure-alls the world has produced. There is no work in existence better calculated to promote this sort of convalescence than this one on the nests and eggs that we so often run past in our ignorance of the joy a bush or stump or tree has in store for those who have a mind to find it.

+----------------------------------------------------------------- + | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. | | | | Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant | | form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. | | | | Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. | | | | Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs | | and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that | | references them. | | | | Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, | | _like this_, bolded words by equal signs, =like this=. | | | | The Contents table was added by the transcriber. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+