2 
364 PRACTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ZOOLOGY. 
gation I should recommend you to pursue. It is true that, 
knowing the bird we have been speaking about was a 
titmouse, you might have saved yourself all this trouble, 
and have turned at once to the page of the book wherein 
you thought it might be described. This mode of pro- 
ceeding will be all very well, when you are so far ad- 
vanced as to know by heart the chief divisions; but 
if you begin in this way, your reason and observation 
will not be called into exercise; you will overlook 
things apparently trivial, but upon which a great deal 
depends. You will, in fact, learn your lesson like a 
parrot, without being able to assign veasons when your 
book is taken from you. 
(450.) Here, then, is an example of the mode in 
which you should proceed, not only in ornithology, but 
in every other branch. It is quite useless to multiply 
instances in entomology, conchology, or any of the 
other departments. The names only would differ, the 
principles would be precisely the same. Besides, if you 
wish to follow my plan of study, you must wait until 
the volumes, to which I must inevitably refer you, are 
published. If you are impatient, you may, however, 
in the mean time, pursue this plan with Linneus, Tem- 
minck, or on any other of the artificial systems ; although 
there is great fear that, as my scholar, having to unlearn 
a good deal of what you will there /earn, your ideas at 
first will become confused, and you will be less pre- 
pared to receive instruction in the system you ultimately 
intend to follow, than if you kept your mind free from 
different impressions. Be this, however, as it may, the 
plan of study I have chalked out is equally applicable 
to any system, no matter who is the expositor ; and I 
shall end with this advice, — Follow that arrangement 
which is most agreeable to what you see in nature, and 
most conducive to exhibit the infinite beauty of that 
system, whatever it be, which must belong to the har- 
monious plan of an Omnipotent CREATOR. _ 
