Page:The queen bee and other nature stories.djvu/14

Preface. his own. Holding that Nature, with its manifold and many-coloured life, contains new material on which children in their own way can draw, he has taken as the subject of his stories the phenomena of natural history.

"As I think, he has performed his task in a taking and attractive manner, the child's fancy being sufficiently enthralled at the same time that it gets a true conception of the working of natural forces, a conception which will fix itself in the memory all the better for its poetical clothing.

"It seems to me that the author's view is a sound one, so I gladly recommend his little book to parents who wish their children to read what is both pleasurable and instructive."

There are some touches in the stories, of course, which belong rather to Denmark than England for example, the custom of ringing the church bells at sunset, the complete disappearance of starlings in the winter months, the "starlings' box" which is ready for them to rest in on their return, the presence of the stork. The phenomenon of beech forests extruding and supplanting oak forests (referred to by Dr. Wallace in "Darwinism" as one of the most striking instances of "natural selection") is one of which there are clearer traces in Scandinavian countries than in Great Britain. But, on the whole, Nature is the same in England