CHARACTER IN FEATHERS. 57 



taste for shooting, and an aversion from dissect- 

 ing; who delights in the hving creatures them- 

 selves, and counts a bird in the bush worth two 

 in the hand. Such a person, if he is intelligent, 

 makes good use of the best works on ornithol- 

 ogy ; he would not know how to get along with- 

 out them ; but he studies most the birds them- 

 selves, and after a while he begins to associate 

 them on a plan of his own. Not that he dis- 

 trusts the approximate correctness of the re- 

 ceived classification, or ceases to find it of daily 

 service ; but though it were as accurate as the 

 multiplication table, it is based (and rightly, no 

 doubt) on anatomical structure alone ; it rates 

 birds as bodies, and nothing else : while to the 

 person of whom we are speaking birds are, first 

 of all, souls ; his interest in them is, as we say, 

 personal ; and we are none of us in the habit of 

 grouping our friends according to height, or 

 complexion, or any other physical peculiarity. 



But it is not proposed in this paper to attempt 

 a new classification of any sort, even the most 

 unscientific and fanciful. All I am to do is to 

 set down at random a few studies in such a 

 method as I have indicated ; in short, a few 

 studies in the temperaments of birds. Nor, in 

 making this attempt, am I unmindful how elu- 

 sive of analysis traits of character are, and how 

 diverse is the impression which the same per- 



