Excerpt from Round the Calendar in Portugal Then again, we are curious (and generally get little satisfaction Of our curiosity) to be told what birds wing their way through the air he breathes in, or flit among the trees; are flushed by his footsteps, or break the silence Of his far Off home with twitter and song? If he is a sportsman, our sympathies are aroused to know what animals, great or small, his dog scents the track of, or hunts out in the bushes. Are there tigers to eat him, snakes to bite him, or scorpions to sting him? What insects light upon his flowers by day, or buzz against his reading-lamp at night? How too about centipedes, mosquitoes, ants, gnats, midges? I always desire that my distant friends should volunteer voluminous answers to questions such as these, and not force me to draw them forth by a painful cross-examination. 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.