268 APPENDIX. 



If you own an opera glass, use it. Any glass is a help, 

 but in buying one always buy a better one! In buying be 

 generous with yourself, recollecting that cheap glasses are not 

 good and good glasses are not cheap. And yet the price is no 

 surety of excellence. A friend, who had bought six, told me 

 that the best of them was much the cheapest. A field glass 

 is better than an opera glass. Select a good maker, whose 

 name is a guarantee. A glass must be achromatic, stiff-framed, 

 of large field and fair power. Sacrifice power to field rather 

 than field to power. A high power necessitates a longer frame, 

 which tires the neck and the arm, and a small field, which 

 makes it difficult to locate the bird. An aluminum frame is 

 best on account of its light weight. The new Bausch and 

 Lomb Trieder glasses, being made on a different principle, 

 give a high power, a large field, light weight, and a compact, 

 short frame, but the price puts them beyond the reach of the 

 ordinary amateur. With these, one of the night glasses may 

 be found to be less trying to the eyes for sustained observation 

 than the regular day glass. 



Time. The morning is worth many times any other part of 

 the day, because it is generally cool, bright, free from wind; it 

 is also the period of the bird's greatest activity. Enthusiasts 

 rout you out with the sun, but unless it is proposed to visit 

 crow, robin, or swallow roosts it seems to me that the uncer- 

 tain light, malarial fogs, heavy dews, and morning chill must 

 damp the enthusiasm of even the "four-o'clockers." Six o'clock 

 is early enough, and from seven to nine is the best time for the 

 most people. Afternoon work is seldom satisfactory, as the 

 wind rises, the light is weak and bad, and the birds are tired 

 and silent. 



Look for birds you know. Don't hunt rarities. They will 

 come to you if they are in the neighborhood, but if you hunt 

 them you will be losing good notes on the familiar but not less 

 interesting species. 



Go to gardens, groves, shrubbery, and thickets near town, 



