FLIGHT OF BIRDS. 239 



what a right forward, short, whirring flight the little thing has ; 

 how it flits along the fence, perches on a stum]3, jerks up its 

 tail, chirps its small sharp notes, nods and becks, and is off. 

 There too a Hedge-Sparrow, which some call Shufflew^ing, 

 from a habit of slightly raising and shaking its wings ; it hops 

 away very quietly but nimbly, gets among the roots, shifts along, 

 and flies in under the brambles, where it conceives itself secure. 



AVell, all this is very amusing, but of what use ? What is 

 the amusement of school-boys cannot w^ith propriety be the 

 sober pursuit of men. 



We are all school-boys, or at least scholars, and when we 

 forget that w^e are so, we become fools. If we go to the school 

 of Nature, and study God's providence, w^e can be better em- 

 ployed only when in the school of revelation w^e study God's 

 grace. Let us ever retain our school-boy feelings, so long as 

 they are innocent. There is a freshness of heart manifest in 

 every real lover of nature, — a delightful feeling, gratif^dng not 

 to one's self only, but to his companions. When it is gone, 

 and the frost of worldly wisdom has chilled the affections, the 

 naturalist becomes a pompous, pedantic, stiff-necked, cold- 

 blooded thing, from which you shrink back unwittingly. I 

 have the pleasure of being familiar with an ornithologist who 

 has spent thirty years in study ; who has ransacked the steam- 

 ing swamps of Louisiana, traversed the tangled and trackless 

 woods of the Missouri, ascended the flowery heights of the Alle- 

 ghanies, and clambered among the desolate crags of cold and 

 misty Labrador ; who has observed, and shot, and drawn, and 

 described the birds of half a continent. Well, what then I Has 

 this man the grave and solemn croak of that carrion-crow, or 

 the pertness and impudence of that pilfering jackdaw. No, I 

 have seen him chasing tom-tits with all the glee of a truant 

 school-boy, and have heard him communicate his knowledge 

 w^th the fervour and feeling of a warm-hearted soul, as he is. 

 Why, the man of all men for a naturalist, is he who watches 

 larks in the fields, pursues dippers by the brooks, wades into 

 bogs after snipes, climbs trees to get at crows' eggs, thinks 

 nothing of fording the Esk in the midst of a snow-storm, or of 

 scouring Guillon Sands in the dog-days. After all, tempera- 



