Song Birds and Water Fowl 



times the poorest place in the world to go to, 

 to learn the meaning of a word. We often speak 

 disparagingly of popular notions of things, be- 

 cause of their notoriously scientific inaccuracy, 

 forgetting that the popular sense of a fact often 

 involves an element of truth that is persistently 

 ignored by science, and yet is quite as important 

 as any aspect of the matter that science recog- 

 nizes. In fact, the popular estimate is likely to 

 be more vital than the scientific, since science is 

 , inclined to be anatomical. The popular mind 

 comes close to the popular heart, while science 

 glories in standing aloof from all sentiment. 

 Weighed in purely scientific balances, sentiment 

 is lighter than vanity. Science looks at an ob- 

 ject in nature analytically, in its isolation ; sen- 

 timent regards it comprehensively, in the lights 

 and shadows cast upon it by surrounding ob- 

 jects. Therefore the most untutored lover of 

 nature is a far higher authority as to the music 

 of nature than the profoundest professor of 

 acoustics, or the most consummate technical 

 musician. Possibly sentiment is more super- 

 ficial than science ; but, at any rate, it often 

 discerns what is quite unknown to science ; 

 and, to those that scorn the shallowness of a 

 merely sentimental view of things it is com- 



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