172 WITH THE U. S. NATURALISTS 



nearly all the time, like the Man-o'-War bird, I can 

 tell it by the long wings. Then every kind of bird 

 has his own way of flying, such as the flapping of 

 the Crow, the soaring of the Hawk, the darting of 

 the Swallow, the straight-away flight of the Wood- 

 cock or the bounding style of the Finch." 



"I'm willin' to say," remarked Bull, when the 

 lad had finished, "that yoVe been workin' hard 

 over yo' names, an' if it leads yo' to know the 

 birds when yo' see 'em, it ain't waste time. But, 

 if yo' want my idees, this photygraph stuff looks 

 to me right smart close to foolishness. If yo ' want 

 to know about a bird, shoot it, an' skin it an' stuff 

 it. Then yo've got somethin'. But a picture of 

 a bird on a bit of paper — what's the tarnation use 

 0' that?" 



Shan defended himself as best he could. 



*'If I waited till you were dead, Bull," he said, 

 "and then skinned you and stuffed you, I wouldn't 

 know as much about you as I do now, would 11" 



Even the stern, set face of the old pot-hunter 

 relaxed into a smile at this. 



''Well," the boy continued, tiying to make his 

 explanation clear to himself as he went along, "it 

 seems wrong, in a way, just to think of birds as 

 things that must be dead before you start to know 



