Prelude 



very exceptional opportunities of observation. 

 But, unlike most other sciences, there are two 

 distinct lines of procedure in this, two sides to 

 it : the indoor and the outdoor — the purely 

 scientific and the popular — ^school and field or- 

 nithology. The one is technical and anatom- 

 ical, the dead data — rather dry, as some would 

 count dryness; the other has to do with the 

 bird's life-history — coloration, habits, and song 

 — with all the associations of the most de- 

 lightful surroundings in nature: leading one 

 away from the haunts of worriment or business 

 into the quiet places where, as Spenser says, 



" The merry lark her matins sings aloft ; 



The thrush replies ; the mavis descant plays ; 

 The ousel shrills ; the redbreast warbles soft." 



This distinction between the two lines of 

 study finds a literal illustration in the difference 

 between school and field botany ; still better, 

 however, in the contrast between medical and 

 field botany : the latter associated with all the 

 exhilaration of search and discovery, of moun- 

 tain air and woodland ramble, of the fascina- 

 tion of Nature's society and solitude. Medical 

 botany has all the rigid formalism of economic- 

 root-and-herb analysis of the laboratory ; deal- 



