Excerpt from Old Farm Fairies: A Summer Campaign in Brownieland Against King Cobweaver's Pixies; A Story for Young People This preface shall be a personal explanation. The following book was written during the winter of 187 6 - 77, more than eighteen years ago. Its origin was in this wise: Some of my readers will know that for more than twenty years I have studied the habits of our spider fauna. During the first years of these studies, the thought came to me to write a book for youth wherein my observations should be personified in the imaginary creatures of fairy lore, and thus float into the young mind some of my natural history findings in such pleas ant form that they would be received quite unconsciously, and at least an impression thereof retained with sufficient accuracy to open the way to more serious lessons in the future. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.