io8 What Birds Have Done With Me 



rounded with crude decorative attempts is a trav- 

 esty of the real thing, who as Robert Browning 

 said of the thrush: 



"He sings each song twice over, 

 Lest you should think hie never could recapture 

 The first fine careless rapture." 



The movie man calls his undeveloped films 

 "stills," but these dead and dusty things in cases, 

 that once were birds, can never be developed into 

 something with a vital relation to life, they are 

 "stills" forever. To study them is to study death, 

 not life; as well study the withered flower, the 

 dead and leafless tree, or a moss-grown tomb. 



I am yet to meet any bird-lover who was ready 

 to admit that he ever learned anything of birds 

 of real value by the study of the stuffed specimens 

 in the museum and, of course, pictures of these 

 stuffed specimens are equally worthless. I once 

 asked a class in high school to name for me a 

 photograph of "Bob White" after he had disap- 

 peared from Wisconsin, that had been made from 

 a stuffed specimen and someone called it a Tur- 

 key Buzzard, without a dissenting voice being 

 raised in the class. Indeed, that fine naturalist, 

 W. H. Hudson, in his book, "Birds and Man," 

 repudiates the notion that anything can be learned 

 of birds by the study of the finest collection in 

 existence. He says: "These collections help no 



