Song Birds and Water Fowl 



one who has a seeing eye and listening ear ; 

 and there is no finer text than they in all the 

 world to stick to or to wander from. 



The student of Nature finds every grove and 

 the brink of every stream to be populated, not 

 as of yore with beauteous nymphs and alluring 

 hamadryads, but with a probably much more 

 instructive coterie, capable of transforming 

 every solitude into society, the cultivation of 

 whose acquaintance has been to me what 

 Coleridge declared that poetry had been to 

 him — "its own exceeding great reward. It 

 has multiplied and refined my enjoyments : it 

 has endeared solitude : and it has given me the 

 habit of wishing to discover the Good and the 

 Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." 



60 



