24 Spring 



rescue it from obscure and unsafe keeping. But the 

 birds that twitter by dusty highway and woodland 

 path, the nests and eggs concealed by them among 

 the green boughs and tall grass, the heaths and grasses, 

 wild flowers and ferns, the mosses and fungi that 

 luxuriously garment the fertile land, and are never 

 wholly absent on the barest scrap of rock or dreariest 

 upland moor, are common property, and never 

 more delightful than in their appointed places. The 

 amateur of curios and the antiquary are able to pre- 

 serve and beautify and enhance the value of their 

 relics. It is not so with the out-of-door collector. A 

 preserved plant is beneath comparison with a living 

 one, an egg's more brilliant colours fade from the 

 moment it is blown, fur and plumage are slightly but 

 perceptibly dulled by death, and the most adept taxi- 

 dermist can show but one attitude of a creature whose 

 chiefest charm lies in change and movement. ' Well- 

 preserved specimens,' says an enthusiastic authority, 

 ' will last for ever and a day ; ' but what he means 

 is, that if assiduously preserved from defilement and 

 mutilation, and insects, a well-stuffed bird may possi- 

 bly last for a century. Long before that period 

 elapses it will become in the eyes of a lover of nature 

 (as distinguished from the student of natural history) 

 as unlike a living bird as a mummy is unlike a human 

 being. 



Nature is so bountiful that without any perceptible 

 impoverishment she is able to fill the cabinets and 



