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Our Feathered Companions Conversations of a Father with his Children about Sea birds, Song birds, and other feathered tribes that live in or visit the British Isles, their habits, &c Dogs and their Doings

Abstract

THE first of the books of which we give the titles above, is one we cannot take up without pleasure, because of the memories that its numerous illustrations bring to those who are shut up amongst bricks and mortar, of some wild sea-shore, sweet and tender woodland, or moor with gorse and fern; all of which are the homes of birds who would rather be free from the companionship of man than seek it, and which we love all the more for their wild freedom. “Our Feathered Companions” is full of information about birds, telling many well-known things about their habits and lives, of which children will never tire as long as there are children. With regard to the children in this book, we wish our author had drawn them from nature; we do not often meet with little boys who quote Greek out of school, and should be sorry if little girls were always moralising about birds being useful to man; we cannot read the narrative without feeling that their lives must have some other purpose beyond this, and we are glad that our children should be reminded by some of the little poems in the book, that they should love birds for their beauty, and learn all they can about them, rather than kill them to gratify a selfish desire for possession. The pictures of sea-birds are almost all charming, and there are many more of our favourite birds which, with a few exceptions, are very good.

Our Feathered Companions. Conversations of a Father with his Children about Sea birds, Song birds, and other feathered tribes that live in or visit the British Isles, their habits, &c.

By the Rev. Thomas Jackson (London: S. W. Partridge and Co.)

Dogs and their Doings.

By the Rev. F. O. Morris (London: S.W. Partridge and Co.)

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Our Feathered Companions Conversations of a Father with his Children about Sea birds, Song birds, and other feathered tribes that live in or visit the British Isles, their habits, &c Dogs and their Doings . Nature 3, 344–345 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003344b0

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