ELLIOTT COVES. 27 
some of the keenest enjoyments of which my nature has 
proven capable, some of the most lasting pleasures which 
life has had to offer me, have been derived from intellectual 
intimacy with feathered friends in their own world. 
When that tanager brought the message to me, I was not 
different from other children, except that I was rather more 
delicate than a perfectly healthy child should be, and there- 
fore perhaps more impressionable than the average boy ; 
but why should not many a boy take like pleasure in ob- 
serving birds, and derive from them like lessons of life? 
The natural sciences, as they are called—though I know of 
no unnatural science—are more taught in our common and 
high schools than they used’to be when I was on the 
benches; and there is certainly no one department of 
natural history to which young folks take more kindly, or 
for which the materials are more copious and accessible, 
than the study of birds. I wish for and hope to see the day 
when some knowledge of ornithology, in its rudiments at 
least, shall be taught in all our schools, as a matter of 
course. 
I beg you to indulge my reminiscential mood a moment 
longer, for I wish to speak a little further on the utility of 
birds as objects of scientific study in the training of the 
intellect, and in so doing to draw further upon some personal 
experiences, to point a moral if not to adorn a tale. In my 
intercourse with birds as a student, sentiment has always 
been subordinated to science, and in the course of my career 
I have sacrificed many thousands of birds to slake my thirst 
for knowledge. Thus, though my nature is neither cruel 
nor wanton, though I have always shrunk instinctively from 
inflicting needless pain or taking life lightly, my walk among 
birds was for many years neither harmless nor merciful to 
these objects of my scientific scrutiny. I used to be a keen 
sportsman, and was a crack shot during the height of my 
activities as a collector of specimens. Yet I can truly say 
that I never killed for the pleasure of killing, never witnessed 
