INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 301 



if he is desirous of acquiring solid information or cor- 

 rect ideas of the works of nature. In prosecuting this 

 object we shall assume it as granted, that the student is 

 more willing to he taught than to cavil ; that he will be 

 content to receive, as presumed truths, the results of the 

 experience gained by his instructor ; and that he will 

 not consider it necessary that those difficulties and ob- 

 jections, elsewhere alluded to, are to be submitted to his 

 fiat, before he is at all qualified to venture an opinion 

 even upon the least of them. He must not, in short, 

 ascend the stall of the critic before he has quitted the 

 form of the scholar. Let him receive what instruction 

 we can give him in the belief that it is sound. And 

 when he has thoroughly imbibed and completely under- 

 stands all that we can teach him, he may then fairly in- 

 vestigate for himself whether such things are really 

 true. 



(367.) Naturalists, in the general acceptation of the 

 word, may all be classed under two distinct divisions 

 the practical and the scientific. Their more immediate 

 pursuits, .no less than their necessary qualifications, are 

 very dissimilar, but he only who unites them all is the true 

 naturalist. The practical naturalist wanders abroad, 

 and observes individuals. The fields and the woods are 

 his museum and library. He contemplates living objects, 

 but cares little for dead ones ; he busies himself with 

 watching the times and seasons when certain animals 

 make their appearance ; he strives to know their food, in- 

 stincts, habits ; he is dissatisfied until he is acquainted 

 with the note of every bird familiar to his neighbour- 

 hood ; he studies the construction of their nests, their 

 periodical arrivals and departures, their loves, their lives, 

 and their deaths. He watches their several changes of 

 form, of colour, or of plumage ; he traces how these cir- 

 cumstances are modified and influenced by the seasons ; 

 and he makes special notes of these things in his common- 

 place book. If he discovers that his crops or his fruit 

 are injured by insects, he rests not until he traces the 

 aggressor through all its series of depredations ; and, 



