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 %vell for science 

 that such collections are often accumulated by wealthy 

 amateurs, who liberally permit others to turn them to 

 eflfectual 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 hght 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 



