34 FIELD ORNITHOLOGY PART I 



sentiment, a delicate thing, easily degraded to drivel ; crude enthusi- 

 asm always hacks instead of hewing. Beware of literary infelicities ; 

 "the written word remains," it may be, after you have passed 

 away ; put down nothing for your friend's blush, or your enemy's 

 sneer ; write as if a stranger were looking over your shoulder. 



Ornithologieal Book-keeping may be left to your discretion and 

 good taste in the details of execution. Each may consult his 

 preferences for rulings, headings, and blank forms of all sorts, as 

 well as particular modes of entry. But my experience has been 

 that the entries it is advisable to make are too multifarious to he 

 accommodated by the most ingenious formal ruling ; unless, indeed, 

 you make the conventional heading " Eemarks " disproportionately 

 wide, and commit to it everything not otherwise provided for. My 

 preference is decidedly for a plain page. I use a strongly bound 

 blank book, cap size, containing at least six or eight quires of good 

 smooth paper ; but smaller may be needed for travelling, even down 

 to a pocket note-book. I would not advise a multiplicity of books, 

 splitting up your record into different departments : let it be 

 journal and register of specimens combined. (The registry of your 

 own collecting has nothing to do with the register of your cabinet 

 of birds, which is sure to include a proportion of specimens from 

 other sources, received in exchange, donated, or purchased. I speak 

 of this beyond.) I have found it convenient to commence a day's 

 record with a register of the specimens secured, each entry consisting 

 of a duplicate of the bird's label (see beyond), accompanied by any 

 further remarks I have to make respecting the particular specimens ; 

 then to go on with the full of my day's observations, as suggested 

 in the last paragraph. You thus have a register of collections in 

 chronological order, told off with an unbroken series of numbers, 

 checked with the routine label -items, and continually interspersed 

 with the balance of your ornithological studies. Since your private 

 field-number is sometimes an indispensable clew to the authentication 

 of a specimen after it has left your own hands, never duplicate it. 

 If you are collecting other objects of natural history besides birds, 

 still have but one series of numbers ; duly enter your mammal, or 

 mineral, or whatever it is, in its place, with the number under which 

 it happens to fall. Be scrupulously accurate with these and all 

 other figures, as of dates and measurements. Always use black ink ; 

 lead-pencilling is never safe. 



Labelling. — This should never be neglected. It is enough to 

 make a sensitive ornithologist shiver to see a specimen without that 

 indispensable appendage — a label. I am sorry to observe that the 

 routine labelling of most collections is far from being satisfactory. 

 A well-appointed label is something more than a slip of paper with 

 the bird's name on it, and is still defective if, as is too often the 



