WRITE OUT YOUR NOTES ! 45 



is clear now will grow obscure ; what is found will be lost. 

 "Write down everything while it is fresh in your mind ; write 

 it out in full — time so spent now will be time saved in the end, 

 when you offer your researches to the discriminating public. 

 Don't be satisfied with a dry-as-dust item ; clothe a skeleton 

 fact, and breathe life into it with thoughts that glow ; let the 

 paper smell of the woods. There's a pulse in a new fact ; 

 catch the rh34hm before it dies. Keep off the quicksands of 

 mere memorandum — that means something "to be remem- 

 bered," which is just what you cannot do. Shun abbrevia- 

 tions ; such ke3'S rust with disuse, and may fail in after times 

 to unlock the secret that should have been laid bare in the 

 beginning. Use no signs * intelligible only to yourself; your 

 note-books may come to be overhauled by others whom you 

 would not wish to disappoint. Be sparing of sentiment, a 

 delicate thing, easily degraded to drivel ; crude enthusiasm 

 always hacks instead of hewing. Beware of literary infe- 

 licities ; "the written word remains," it may be, after you 

 have passed away ; put down nothing for your friend's blush, 

 or your enemy's sneer ; write as if a stranger were looking 

 over your shoulder. 



§28. Ornithological book-keeping may be left to your 

 discretion and good taste in the details of execution. Each 

 may consult his preferences for rulings, headings, and blank 

 forms of all sorts, as well as particular modes of entry. But 

 my experience has been that the entries it is advisable to 

 make are too multifarious to be accommodated by the most 

 ingenious formal ruling ; unless, indeed, you make the con- 

 ventional heading "Remarks" disproportionately wide, and 

 commit to it everything not otherwise provided for. My pref- 

 erence is decidedlj^ for a plain page. I use a strongly bound 

 blank book, cap size, containing at least six or eight quires of 



* This dh-ectiou does not apply to a regiUar code of signs, which may be found 

 extremely convenient. The Messrs. A. & E. Newton have, for example, perfected 

 a system of symbols that leaves little if anytliiug to be desired. See Am. Nat. 

 1872, p. 300. 



