Song Birds and Water Fowl 
a person’s own friendship, but also at the 
entrance thereby to be gained into the society 
in which he moves. In precisely the same way, 
the genuine naturalist, in the prosecution of his 
immediate science, is more or less consciously 
influenced by the attractions of that varied and 
delightful society to which the insect, bird, or 
flower will always introduce him—the endlessly 
diversified, but always restful and exhilarating, 
scenes of Nature, the woodland walk, the influ- 
ence of the quiet stream or lake, the contagion 
of the ocean’s boundless energy, the inspiring 
majesty of mountains, Nature’s silver sounds 
and golden silences, the health that waits upon 
such occupation, with all the minor glimpses 
and suggestions of the beautiful of every sort 
and hue continually flitting across one’s path, 
and, pervading all, the glowing atmosphere 
peculiar to all such research—these form a 
coterie of friends in constant league with flowers 
and birds, with which one quickly finds him- 
self in closest fellowship, and which are quite 
essential to the fullest charm of even the fairest 
object in either of these eminent domains. 
There is a lustre in the flower, that quickly 
vanishes the instant we abstract it from its 
native soil; the captive’s song has lost the color 
o 
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