Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once.

So lie back, adjust your volume.

Take a nice deep breath.

And off we go.

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Tonight we're relaxing with Castle's Book of Birds.

From the text of Dr. Alfred Brehm

by Thomas Reimer Jones, fellow of the Royal Society,

Professor of Natural History and Comparative Anatomy, in Kings College, London, with upwards

of 400 engravings and a series of colored plates.

Written in four volumes, originally published in 1869

by Castle, Petter and Galpin, London, and New York.

Let's begin.

Editor's Introduction

We were some time ago, both delighted and astonished by the performances of a German artist,

who imitated with wonderful exactness the notes of a variety of birds,

the song of the nightingale and the warblings of the skylark. The whistling of the

...