1SS4.] Corrrspoii<fr/ice. 3OI 



ferable, even at the cost of obscuring the very pitli and mnrrow of om- 

 beloved science? 



I am prepared to applaud the energy, the untiring devotion, and the 

 incomprehensible learning of the philologically inclined gentlemen, but 

 T am prompted to ask whether we may not reasonably expect a deliverance 

 from such discussions. I arri quite aware that I shall be told that no com- 

 pulsion is exercised in the matter, and that I need not afflict myself from 

 a sense of duty. But this does not cover the case; I am, it is true, merely 

 one of the most inconspicuous readers of 'The Auk,' but I know of some, 

 at least, who believe as I do, that 'The Auk' would gain strength by 

 excluding such arid matter as it has lately printed for the learned Doctors 

 previously mentioned. If it is said that these articles properly belong in 

 the pages of the 'American Ibis," and it be so decided by a majority of 

 my fellow readers, I shall endeavor to submit as gracefully as may be. 



If you will allow me a word further, I .=hall beg to point out what 

 seems to me a growing evil in Ornithological writings of the present 

 time. The tendency begotten of this precise controversial spirit, is to lose 

 sight of the main object in pursuing the barren details. One who 

 examines a landscape with a field-glass may be able to tell you that a 

 man in a blue flannel shirt is rubbing down the farmer's horse in that 

 distant farmyard, but, if fascinated by the power of the glass, he con- 

 tinues his examinations till the waning of the day, what is his knowledge 

 of the details worth, compared to your own appreciation of the whole.'' 



Now it appears to me that this is just what too many of our recent 

 writers are doing. When a man pores over the distorted skin of what 

 was once a bird, eventually asserting that the "hallux is slightly longer 

 than the first phalanx of the middle toe," he has stated what may be a 

 very valuable fact in analysis. But let him beware lest, in his solicitude 

 for the minute, he totall}- unfit himself for a true appreciation of the 

 whole. 



An excessive familiarity with proper scientific terms is the bane of 

 many otherwise pleasing writers ; whoever wrote of the Woodcock, 

 "Its ej'e is remarkably large and handsome, but unfit to bear the glare of 

 the sun, its full and almost amaurotic appearance plainly suggesting the 

 crefuscular habits of the bird,"* is clearly a victim to pedantry. Not 

 one of the later writers can compare with Audubon or Nuttall in the use 

 of English, and more especially in a certain feeling for nature, a love of 

 the natural for its own sweet sake, unless, indeed, I except John Bur-, 

 roughs. Is it then impossible that accuracy and grace shall go hand in 

 hand.'' Assuredly mere are shining examples to the contrary; where, for 

 instance, in contemporary writing can we find a parallel to the passage in 

 which Audubon tells of his J03' at discovering the American Avocet upon 

 its breeding ground .'' He places before us the whole scene, and describes 

 in graphic terms and simple English, the appearance, the evolutions, and 

 the surroundings of the birds. In short, he wrote with a spirit so loving 

 that one cannot but admire. The science of ornithology has made 



* Vide The Water Birds of North America, Vol. I, p. 184 (Little, Brown & Co., 

 Boston, 1884). 



