CHAPTER III. 



VARIOUS SUGGESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FIELD-WORK. 



§12. To BE A GOOD COLLECTOR, and nothing more, is a 

 small affair ; great skill may be acquired in the art, without 

 a single quality commanding respect. One of the most vulgar, 

 brutal and ignorant men I ever knew was a sharp collector and 

 an excellent taxidermist. Collecting stands much in the same 

 relation to ornithologj^ that the useful and indispensable office 

 of an apothecary bears to the duties of a physician. A field- 

 naturalist is always more or less of a collector ; the latter is 

 sometimes found to know almost nothing of natural history 

 worth knowing. The true ornithologist goes out to study birds 

 alive and destroys some of them simply because that is the 

 only way of learning their structure and technical characters. 

 There is much more about a bird than can be discovered in 

 its dead body — how much more, then, than can be found out 

 from its stuffed skin ! In my humble opinion the man who 

 only gathers birds, as a miser, money, to swell his cabinet, 

 and that other man who gloats, as miser-like, over the same 

 hoard, both work on a plane far beneath where the enlightened 

 naturalist stands. One looks at Nature, and never knows that 

 she is beautiful ; the other knows she is beautiful, as even a 

 corpse may be ; the naturalist catches her sentient expression, 

 and knows how beautiful she is ! I would have you to know 

 and love her ; for fairer mistress never swayed the heart of 

 man. Aim high ! — press on, and leave the halfway-house of 

 mere collectorship far behind in your pursuit of a delightful 

 study, nor fancy the closet its goal. 



§13. Birds may be sought anywhere, at any time; they 

 should be sought everywhere, at all times. Some come about 

 your doorstep to tell their stories unasked. Others spring up 

 before you as you stroll in the field, like the flowers that enticed 



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