INTRODUCTION. 25 



or Wood-Pigeon. Over the meadow, a reddish-coloured 

 hawk is hovering with rapid but scarcely perceptible move- 

 ments of its expanded wings. It is fixed, as it were, in a 

 particular spot, evidently intent on something that lies on 

 the ground beneath it. Now it advances, hovers, sweeps 

 away, hovers again, descends like a stone, and flies off with 

 something in its claws. It must be the Kestrel. And thus 

 one continues taking note, and recording his observations, not 

 merely in his memory, but also on paper. He searches for 

 nests, too, collects eggs, and, in short, does all that he can 

 to master his subject. Such a person cannot fail to know 

 something about birds sooner than he who merely goes to a 

 museum to study them. It may be said that all this labour 

 is misapplied, for that after all little good is done by it ; but 

 I am not here to argue about utility, but simply to shew how 

 one may become an ornithologist. The propriety of becom- 

 ing so he must settle with his own conscience. 



A naturalist and a mere collector are quite different per- 

 sons. Every naturalist must be a collector ; but there are 

 those who, having a certain liking to natural objects often 

 also to prints, paintings, teapots, snuiF-boxes, tobacco-pipes, 

 clubs, spears, swords, and in short almost any thing colle- 

 gible, accumulate day after day, ticket, arrange, dust, and 

 fondle their specimens, until they have lost sight of nature 

 altogether. They neither use them, nor allow another to 

 apply them to any reasonable purpose. 



Among the objects to be collected by the ornithologist are 

 nests and eggs. The former may be kept in large boxes 

 fitted with trays, or in cabinets. Eggs, arranged in small 

 card-boxes partially filled with cut moss, are not only very 

 beautiful, but useful objects. They should be blown by 

 making small openings in the shell, not at the two ends, but 

 near them. Or the contents may be extracted by sucking 

 them into the large bulb of a pointed glass tube made for 

 the purpose, or in various other ways. In collecting eggs, 



