PREFACE. to the mind and health to the body, and thanks to tlie insistnnce upon its delights by inally of our great daily and meelrly newspapers, a love of the subject, and desire to know inore about it, are growing alnongst a11 classes of the community, and it is our earnest desire to help others, if only ill ever so s l all a degree, to read the great book of Nature. No one can possibly lrno v the fascillntion of stdlcing wild creatures in their native haunts with the carncra except the inan m110 has himself iildulgcd in the sport. I am awnre that I clo not approach my subject with the judicial coldiless of an unloving eye, but at the slzine tilne I speak as a man v110 linoms well the jogs of shooting the lordly grouse and circurnvcnt. ing the wily trout, and 1 unhesitatingly say that this new and bloodless form of sport bents them both in point of downright interest. To pit ones skill and ingenuity against the shyness and cunning of a wild bird, or suirilnon the courage and endurance to descend to its home in the face of some dizzy ocean cliff, is in itself a feat which calls forth the very best hunting instincts of the human race. Besides being bloodless and consequently harm less, this new fonn of sport also possesses the additional advaatage of yielding permanent trophies of the sltill and endurance of its votaries, whilst leaving the originals to elljoy their wild free lives, and sit for the next naturalist photographer who comes along to delight in studying thein. This book, which is entirely popular, does not pretend in any nieasure whatsoever to assume the nature of a guide to colIecting and preserving any of the bcasts, birds, or insects described in its pages, but is siinply designed to help the fincling, stutlying, ant1 photographing of wild things at honle going about the everyday business of their lives. It coiltains a succinct account of our new devices, which are of such value that we have, within the last six or seven months, succeeded in photographing the shyest of our feathered friends within ZL few inches of the camera, and made observations of the inost interesting character. A feature of the book is, that it has been written almost entirely in the fields. Some parts of it have been penned beneath the frowning crags of Shetlaad, others under the milk-white blooirl of a Surrey hedgerow. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.