ELLIO TT CO UES. 2 7 



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 



