ONTARIO 



an unfortunate resting-place for the birds, but others fared quite as 

 bad elsewhere, for when a little daughter of Mr. Smith, who keeps 

 the Ocean House went down to play by the lake shore in the morn- 

 ing, she returned in a few minutes with her pinafore full of little dead 

 birds which were being washed up from the lake all along the shore. 

 In former years it was the custom with those who wished a collection 

 of birds to have them mounted and placed in glass cases, but the 

 mounting in very many instances failed to satisfy those who were 

 familiar with the appearance of the birds in life; besides which, 

 they took up too much room, and always suffered by transportation. 

 This mode is now practised mostly by public museums, where the 

 specimens remain permanently, and are under the care of a curator. 

 The plan now followed by amateur collectors is to skin and preserve 

 the specimen, filling out the skin with cotton to about the natural 

 size, so as to make the bird look as if newly killed. In this way 

 they are kept in trays in a cabinet, where they are easy of access for 

 measurement or examination, besides which, through the facilities 

 offered for transportation by mail, an exchange of duplicates can at 

 very small cost be made by collectors residing at far distant points. 

 On the table there are now brought together in this way specimens 

 from Alaska to Texas, and from New Brunswick to California, as 

 well as many intermediate points. 



The month of May, above all others in the year, is the one 

 enjoyed by collectors, the birds being now arrayed in their richest 

 dress, and excursions to the woods in pursuit of them offering so 

 pleasing a change after our long, hard winter has passed away. 

 There is no group of our small birds so interesting as the Warblers, 

 which, though they do not differ much in size, yet vary greatly in 

 plumage, some of them, such as the Blackburnian and Black and 

 Yellow being exceedingly beautiful, while others are so extremely 

 rare everywhere that the securing of one is an event of the season. 

 Among the latter class I may name the Cape May, of which I got 

 two specimens at the beach one morning in May, 1884. 



The name of John Cassin has already been mentioned in this 

 paper as a representative Ornithologist of his time. Hear what he 

 says about the birds we are describing : 



" Bird collecting " says Mr. Cassin, " is the ultimate refinement* 

 the ne plus ultra of all the sports of the field. It is attended with 



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