9 2 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



an oven, year after year, down yonder among the weeds below 

 the mill, and calls 'queeche, queeche' every time I look out of the 

 window." Does he not know his birds, even though he might 

 fail to identify their skins ? 



Even the amusing testimony of the savants of the French 

 Academy who presented to Cuvier for identification a descrip- 

 tion of a certain " red fish that walked backward " is not with- 

 out its distinct value. " Of course," replied the naturalist instant- 

 ly, " you mean a crab, though it is not a fish, neither is it red, 

 nor does it walk backward." The learned tyro would at least 

 show his "fish" where he found it in its native element, and 

 though his vision appears to have been somewhat askew, his was 

 a worthier aim and attitude than the other extreme of exact sci- 

 ence which has to do merely with museum specimens, with a 

 ready list of synonyms in place of an inspiring reminiscence, with 

 wire and tow as a substitute for animation and song. "A bird 

 in the hand is worth two in the bush" is a pagan motto for the 

 ornithologist. " The bird is not in its ounces and inches," says 

 Emerson, " but in its relations to nature ; and the skin or skele- 

 ton you show me is no more a heron than a heap of ashes into 

 which his body has been reduced is Dante or Washington." 

 The true ornithologist knows his bird in the bush before he 

 converts it into a specimen ; and to truly know his bird in its 

 bush he must have been admitted to its home. Neither the 

 color of the plumage nor the shape and decoration of its egg, 

 while so essential in the scientific classification of the bird, are 

 any index to its conscious being the true bird. Bobolink doffs 

 his white cap, not from desire or volition, but because he can't 

 help it. These functions are fulfilled in spite of the bird and 

 are beyond his control, while even the finer attributes of hab- 

 its and song may be said to be scarcely less spontaneous and 

 automatic. 



Not so the nest the home, the cradle. In these exquisite 

 fabrics, materializations of the supreme aspirations in the life of 

 the bird, we have at once a key to its mind, an epitome of its 

 loves, its hope, solicitude, providence, its individuality, its energy, 



