Part 1

Transcriber's Note

Italicized text has been surrounded by underscores. Bold text has been surrounded by =equal signs=. Some minor punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and punctuation has been retained.

INMATES OF MY HOUSE AND GARDEN

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

=WILD NATURE WON BY KINDNESS.= Illustrated. School Edition, limp cloth, 1s. 6d. Presentation Edition, imitation leather, in box, 5s.

“A charming collection.... Will be found a pleasant companion to young people in their holiday haunts.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

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=MORE ABOUT WILD NATURE.= Illustrated. Paper, 1s.; cloth, 2s.

“No better book can be given to juvenile naturalists.”—Graphic.

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LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

INMATES OF MY HOUSE AND GARDEN

MRS. BRIGHTWEN

Author of “Wild Nature Won by Kindness”

ILLUSTRATED BY THEO. CARRERAS

London T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1895

All rights reserved.

MISS ELEANOR ORMEROD

Consulting Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society, and Fellow of the Meteorological Society.

DEAR MISS ORMEROD,—

For thirty years you have been a pioneer in the fields of agricultural zoology and chemistry, and it may most truly be said that no woman has ever done so much as you have to protect agriculture against its natural enemies. In the special departments to which you have devoted your life, it is universally admitted that you are without a rival.

My little volumes do not compete with work so serious as yours, yet you have gratified me with your commendation of their truthfulness, and you have permitted me the pleasure of dedicating to you this one, in some chapters of which I deal with the classes which are most familiar to yourself.

Believe me to be Yours very sincerely, ELIZA BRIGHTWEN.

THE GROVE, GREAT STANMORE. June, 1895.

PREFACE.

ENCOURAGED by the extremely kind reception which has been awarded to my previous books, and by the assurances, which have reached me from the most unexpected sources, that they have been found pleasant and profitable, I am venturing to offer to the same indulgent public a third collection of personal studies of natural history.

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.