CHAPTER XVIII 
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW 
» these glimpses of one corner and another 
of our wild garden, it appears that not 
the least part of our inheritance is in the 
birds, and the enjoyment of birds, like the 
enjoyment of people,is a matter of cultivation, 
of sympathy and understanding. The study 
of the bird in the open is comparable to con- 
genial society; in the museum or the labora- 
tory, to the dissecting-room. But we are 
speaking of friends, and the word “study” 
is an ill-advised, even abhorent term in this 
connection. It will answer well enough for 
rocks or for the lower orders, but if you are 
“studying’’ birds, it is to be inferred that you 
have no friends among them. ‘They are still 
aborigines, or aliens or curiosities to you. 
Birds become our friends by a process de- 
pending almost wholly upon ourselves and 
little if at all upon the bird, beyond the 
part its personality—its family personality— 
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