EVILS OF INDISCRIMINATE COLLECTING. 313 
standing. In our volume which will include Taxidermy, 
the reader will find many hints upon this subject, and 
many plans for forming collections, which may materially 
assist him. We strongly recommend his attention to this 
subject, and we proffer him the fruits of our own ex- 
perience in this matter. Looking back to the early 
years of my own life, when I collected every thing, and 
understood nothing, I feel how much more profitably 
time might have been employed, had some judicious 
friend directed my enthusiasm to the accomplishment 
of a definite object, and had guided my exertions into 
a regular channel. The remarks (374.) that have been 
already made on the concentration of study, are equally 
applicable to the concentration of materials for that 
study. The collector of a museum, even under every 
advantage, will find the whole of his time barely suf- 
ficient for the arrangement and the preservation of his 
specimens; to make them the objects of his study, under 
such circumstances, is impossible. It is well for science 
that such collections are often accumulated by wealthy 
amateurs, who liberally permit others to turn them to 
effectual use. But the student, who really desires to 
understand what he possesses, should resist all temptations 
to collect indiscriminately. His mind will be distracted 
from the steady prosecution of any one course of inves- 
tigation, and he will be bewildered in the variety of his 
materials. The passion for collecting increases with its 
indulgence ; and he will finally not be unlike one of our 
modern bibliologists, who went on purchasing entire 
libraries, until obliged, for want of room, to deposit them 
in cases and dark garrets, only to see the light and be 
put again into circulation at the death of their owner. 
(379.) It is obviously impossible to lay down any 
specific rules for the systematic naturalist, in the form- 
ation of his collection ; seeing that so much depends 
upon the opportunities or advantages he may possess of 
acquiring specimens, and upon the nature of that line 
of study he intends to pursue. Should he confine him- 
self either to the birds, the insects, or the shells of his 
