Song Birds and Water Fowl 
times the poorest place in the world to go to, 
to learn the meaning ofa word. We often speak 
disparagingly of popular notions of things, be- 
cause of their notoriously scientific inaccuracy, 
forgetting that the popular sense of a fact often 
involves an element of truth that is persistently 
ignored by science, and yet is quite as important 
as any aspect of the matter that science recog- 
nizes. In fact, the popular estimate is likely to 
be more vital than the scientific, since science is 
inclined to be anatomical. The popular mind 
comes close to the popular heart, while science 
glories in standing aloof from all sentiment. 
Weighed in purely scientific balances, sentiment 
is lighter than vanity. Science looks at an ob- 
ject in nature analytically, in its isolation ; sen- 
timent regards it comprehensively, in the lights 
and shadows cast upon it by surrounding ob- 
jects. Therefore the most untutored lover of 
nature is a far higher authority as to the music 
of nature than the profoundest professor of 
acoustics, or the most consummate technical 
musician. Possibly sentiment is more super- 
ficial than science; but, at any rate, it often 
discerns what is quite unknown to science ; 
and, to those that scorn the shallowness of a 
merely sentimental view of things it is com- 
IIo 
