29 EFFECTS OF THE ERROR. 



most probably been obtained from observations in 

 a climate differing from yours, and therefore is not 

 quite accurate, as the description of your redbreast. 

 Carry your interrogations a little farther : Ask what 

 is the geographical distribution of the bird ; what 

 circumstances tend to increase or to decrease its 

 numbers ; what are its uses in the general economy 

 of nature, or its particular use or injury to man as a 

 cultivator of the earth ; and you will find the answers 

 still more difficult to be obtained, as well as more 

 unsatisfactory in the few cases where you can obtain 

 them. 



Now, we can account for this general want of in- 

 formation upon a subject which is not only so open 

 to observation but so inviting, only in the books of 

 instruction to which the great body of the people have 

 access, not being of that kind which leads to personal 

 observation or harmonises with it. The natural 

 subject always presents us with the general view, not 

 only of the creature itself as a whole, but so inti- 

 mately connected with all the circumstances of place 

 and time, that if we do not take notice of them, the 

 mere details of the creature are not worth studying, 

 and they are accordingly not studied by the people 

 generally, but left to those who have a professional 

 or a personal object in the study ; and then the ac- 

 complishment of that object is not always the most 

 certain guide to the truth. He who observes the bird, 

 often does so as a mere ornithologist, and so misses 

 the greatest part both of the use and the pleasure. 



Every production of nature, when rightly studied, 

 becomes, in after time, an index to that part of nature 

 in connexion with which it is found ; and a bird, as 

 being one of the most remarkable of those produc- 

 tions, is more easily suggested to the mind than any 



