148 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



our school-boy feelings, so long as they are innocent. 

 There is a freshness of heart manifest in every real lover 

 of Nature a delightful feeling, gratifying not to one's 

 self only, but to his companions. When it is gone, and 

 the frost of worldly wisdom has chilled the affections, 

 the naturalist becomes a pompous, pedantic, stiff-necked, 

 cold-blooded thing, from which you shrink back un- 

 wittingly. I have the pleasure of being familiar with 

 an ornithologist who has spent thirty years in study, 

 who has ransacked the steaming swamps of Louisiana, 

 traversed the tangled and trackless woods of the Missouri, 

 ascended the flowery heights of the Alleghanies, and 

 clambered among the desolate crags of cold and misty 

 Labrador ; who has observed, and shot and drawn, and 

 described the birds of half a continent. Well, what 

 then ? Has this man the grave and solemn croak of 

 that carrion-crow, or the pertness and impudence of that 

 pilfering jackdaw. No, I have seen him chasing torn-tits 

 with all the glee of a truant school-boy, and have heard 

 him communicate his knowledge with the fervour and 

 feeling of a warm-hearted soul, as he is. British Birds, 

 vol. i. p. 239. 



5. A TAME ROCK DOVE. 



The boys in the Outer Hebrides often attempt to 

 rear young doves, but their cares are seldom continued 

 long enough. They introduce the food, dry barley grain, 

 by the side of the mouth, which occasions inflammation 



