148 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
longer be depended upon; and an ornithologist 
would no more expect to find the sparrow of 
Europe in the farmyards of the Cape Colony, or 
even in North America, than he would to discover 
a race of Indians in the mountains of Scotland. 
Now, as there are few countries out of Europe, 
where, if a traveller goes, he will not have to speak 
of its natural productions, it follows that his quali- 
fication for doing this will be measured by his pro- 
ficiency in natural history. He may, indeed, omit 
the subject altogether ; but it will be at the hazard 
of his book holding a very inferior station in the 
estimation of the public. We allude not, of course, 
to those entertaining but ephemeral narratives of 
travels, published under the appropriate titles of 
Notes, Sketches, Short Residences, &c. wherein amuse- 
ment rather than instruction is aimed at. It is not 
to such sources that we are to look for solid inform- 
ation on the laws, the statistics, or the productions 
of a country; nor do we place them as standard 
books of reference on the same shelf of our library as 
Humboldt’s New Spain, Burchell’s Africa, or Ward’s 
Mexico. Our observations are addressed to tra- 
vellers of a higher class: yet even the sketching 
and noting tourists of the day, while they gallop over 
a certain number of leagues against time, would do 
well to know something of the animals which they 
pass, or the productions which they cannot stop to 
bring home as tests of their veracity. The world 
of animals is as replete with anecdotes as that of 
man; and although they may not be so generally 
amusing, they will often be found more instruc- 
tive. 
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