j&trti^lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. IV 



November— December, 1902 



No. 6 



On Journal Keeping 



BY ERNEST THOMPSON SETON 



HEN first I went into the West, just twenty-one years, 

 ago, with the intention of using my eyes and learning all 1 

 I could of nature in the wilds, a friend, an old natur- 

 alist, said to me: "Do not fail to keep a journal of 

 everything you see and hear." 

 I could not see just why, but I had faith enough in his opinion to 

 begin a journal, which I have kept ever since and hope to keep to the 

 end. My friend did not tell me, probably did not know, what good 

 purpose was to be served by the journal; but I think it came to me 

 gradually as the years went by. The older I grow the more I see and 

 realize the value of the daily note of the truth, the simple fact, bald, 

 untooled and incomplete perhaps, but honestly given as it was found. 

 I would have each observer in the natural history world keep a journal 

 on the lines already sketched in Bird -Lore, and enter therein daily — L 

 not from faded memory a month later — whatever facts he can observe, 

 fully embellished with such diagrams, sketches, or photographs as will 

 help more fully to set forth the facts. He may wonder at the time 

 what good end it will serve, and one might answer that it is always 

 useful to have a record of one's own doings; or yet more truly, that 

 writing a fact makes one observe it better. But be very sure that all 

 past experience proves it to be a good thing — how good and how valu - 

 able one may not learn for years, may never learn at all. But we do 

 know that it is always good to follow the truth for its own sake; and 

 there is no way that more quickly makes some returns than the Nature 

 Journal. It always pays in the end. There never yet was a sincere, 

 full record made of the testimony of the senses that did not in the end 1 

 prove a priceless treasury of fact. 'The Journal of a Citizen of Paris,' 

 'Pepys' Diary,' 'Harmon's Journal,' 'Lewis & Clark's Journal,' are familiar 



