There is not much else here that can be explained in writing, though many things that you would care to see.
At South Kensington there are many large fine buildings, and the finest of them all is the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was opened by King Edward in 1909. It contains all sorts of wonderful and beautiful art work.
The Natural History Museum at South Kensington is a large building, and it is newer than the British Museum and not so gloomy. It is built of different sorts of yellow brick, and has tall towers, and stands among well-kept green lawns. When you go into the hall you see long galleries stretching out on each side. In one there are most beautifully stuffed birds of every sort you could name, and a great many you could not name. All of these are set up in glass cases, with the flowers and grass or bushes round that the birds choose to make their nests in when they are alive. We can see here all the different ways that birds take to hide their nests and young ones. Poor birds! they have so many enemies--the weasel, who sucks their eggs; the cat, who loves to eat their young ones; the birds larger than themselves, who prey upon them; and last, but not least, the cruel boys who destroy the nests 'for fun,' and a poor sort of fun it is.
There are two ways birds hide their nests: one by really hiding them--that is to say, building them under a deep bank or in the thickest part of a tree--and the other by making them so like their surroundings that it is difficult to see them at all. You all know instances of the first way; the second is not so common. But perhaps the commonest is the plover, who just brings together a few straws on the mud of a field and lays her eggs there without any protection; yet the eggs are so like the mud-coloured surroundings that you might hunt for a long time, and even walk over them without seeing them.
Down the middle of the room at the Museum are the more common British birds, and we will look at one or two. But it is quite impossible to talk about all of them, or we should still be talking when the keeper of the Museum came to turn everyone out and shut up the building for the night.
Look first at this pretty clump of grass, with a bramble trailing over it and a bunch of primroses growing near. You would hardly have found the nest, so well hidden, unless you had known it must be there. It is a robin's, and the mother is bringing a caterpillar for her little family. Which of the three gaping yellow mouths will get the delicious morsel? Quite near is a wren's nest in some ivy, and so neatly is the nest made of moss woven together that there is only one tiny little hole left for the heads of the little wrens to peep out. The perky little father, with his tail cocked up, stands near. He is very shy and jealous, and so is his mate; if you put just the tip of your finger on the edge of a wren's nest the birds would desert at once, leaving the wretched young ones to starve. The little brown bird in the next case is the nightingale, who sings so sweetly; he is not much to look at, yet he has a picturesque home, with meadow-sweet and wild roses growing over it.