56 CHARACTER @W FEATHERS. 
and Mr. B., who hold the deeds of the “ prop- 
erty,” walk through it to look at the timber, 
with an eye todollars and cents. The botanist 
has his errand there, the zodlogist his, and the 
child his. Oftenest of all, perhaps (for barba- 
rism dies hard, and even yet the ministers of 
Christ find it a capital sport to murder small 
fishes), —oftenest of all comes the man, poor 
soul, who thinks of the forest as of a place to 
which he may go when he wishes to amuse him- 
self by killing something. Meanwhile, the rab- 
bits and the squirrels, the hawks and the owls, 
look upon all such persons as no better than in- 
truders (do not the woods belong to those who 
live in them?) ; while nobody remembers the 
meteorologist, who nevertheless smiles in his 
sleeve at all these one-sided notions, and says to 
himself that he knows the truth of the matter. 
So is it with everything; and with all the 
rest, so is it with the birds. ‘The interest they 
excite is of all grades, from that which looks 
upon them as items of millinery, up to that of 
the makers of ornithological systems, who ran- 
sack the world for specimens, and who have no 
doubt that the chief end of a bird is to be named 
and catalogued, — the more synonyms the bet- 
ter. Somewhere between these two extremes 
comes the person whose interest in birds is 
friendly rather than scientific; who has little 
