168 CRUSOE^S ISLAND. 



slow and difficult. Seeing that I noticed this, he ex- 

 plained that it was a judgment on him for pursuing 

 the calling that he did and for killing small birds by 

 compressing their lungs ; for when a small bird falls 

 wounded, in order to kill it the collector takes it be- 

 tween his thumb and finger and presses the sides un- 

 der the wings, where the lungs are situated ; thus it 

 is suffocated and dies in the hand, gasping and flut- 

 tering. 



It was my man's firm belief that the fluttering 

 birds had communicated their convulsions to his own 

 person, and that he would suffer for this sin till his 

 dying day. I would not gainsay this, for I was not in 

 sympathy with the bird hunters ; but I found his ac- 

 quirements very useful to me, and sought to teach him 

 to discriminate between tlie wanton killing of birds 

 for mere pleasure and ornament and collecting for the 

 purposes of science. He was intelligent enough to 

 note this difference and deferential enough to accept 

 my dictum ; but he urged that he had as good a right 

 to shoot the birds for a living as any one had to stock 

 a museum. 



And in truth, I could not say that he had not, hav- 

 ing my own doubts about the pretensions of so-called 

 scientific men, who shoot hundreds and thousands of 

 innocent birds, merely to determine a point of differ- 

 ence in nomenclature or some specific differentiation. 

 At any rate the birds don't know any difference, 

 whether they be martyrs to science or to fashion ! 



My new friend and servant was all that one could 

 have wished — quiet, cleanly, deferential, intelligent, 



