INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 301 
if he is desirous of acquiring solid information or cor- 
rect ideas of the works of nature, In prosecuting this 
object we shall assume it as granted, that the student is 
more willing to be taught than to cavil; that he will be 
content to receive, as presumed truths, the results of the 
experience gained by his instructor ; and that he will 
not consider it necessary that those difficulties and ob- 
jections, elsewhere alluded to, are to be submitted to his 
fiat, before he is at all qualified to venture an opinion 
even upon the least of them. He must not, in short, 
ascend the stall of the critic before he has quitted the 
form of the scholar. Let him receive what instruction 
we can give him in the belief that it is sound. And 
when he has thoroughly imbibed and completely under- 
stands all that we can teach him, he may then fairly in- 
vestigate for himself whether such things are really 
true. 
(367.) Naturalists, in the general acceptation of the 
word, may all be classed under two distinct divisions — 
the practical and the scientific. Their more immediate 
pursuits, no less than their necessary qualifications, are 
very dissimilar, but he only who unites them all is the true 
naturalist. The practical naturalist wanders abroad, 
and observes individuals. The fields and the woods are 
his museum and library. He contemplates living objects, 
but cares little for dead ones; he busies himself with 
watching the times and seasons when certain animals 
make their appearance ; he strives to know their food, in- 
stincts, habits; he is dissatisfied until he is acquainted 
with the note of every bird familiar to his neighbour- 
hood ; he studies the construction of their nests, their 
periodical arrivals and departures, their loves, their lives, 
and their deaths. He watches their several changes of 
form, of colour, or of plumage ; he traces how these cir- 
cumstances are modified and influenced by the seasons ; 
and he makes special notes of these things in his common- 
place book. If he discovers that his crops or his fruit 
are injured by insects, he rests not until he traces the 
aggressor through all its series of depredations ; and, 
