Song Birds and Water Fowl 



a person's own friendship, but also at the 

 entrance thereby to be gained into the society 

 in which he moves. In precisely the same way, 

 the genuine naturalist, in the prosecution of his 

 immediate science, is more or less consciously 

 influenced by the attractions of that varied and 

 delightful society to which the insect, bird, or 

 flower will always introduce him — the endlessly 

 diversified, but always restful and exhilarating, 

 scenes of Nature, the woodland walk, the influ- 

 ence of the quiet stream or lake, the contagion 

 of the ocean's boundless energy, the inspiring 

 majesty of mountains, Nature's silver sounds 

 and golden silences, the health that waits upon 

 such occupation, with all the minor glimpses 

 and suggestions of the beautiful of every sort 

 and hue continually flitting across one's path, 

 and, pervading all, the glowing atmosphere 

 peculiar to all such research — these form a 

 coterie of friends in constant league with flowers 

 and birds, with which one quickly finds him- 

 self in closest fellowship, and which are quite 

 essential to the fullest charm of even the fairest 

 object in either of these eminent domains. 

 There is a lustre in the flower, that quickly 

 vanishes the instant we abstract it from its 

 native soil; the captive's song has lost the color 



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