
22 SUGGESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FIELD-WORK. 
the feet of Proserpine. Birds flit by as you measure the tired 
roadside, lending a tithe of their life to quicken your dusty 
steps. They disport overhead at hide-and-seek with the foliage 
as you loiter in the shade of the forest, and their music now 
answers the sigh of the tree-tops, now ripples an echo to the 
voice of the brook. But you will not always so pluck a thorn- 
less rose. Birds hedge themselves about with a bristling 
girdle of brier and bramble you cannot break; they build their 
tiny castles in the air surrounded by impassable moats, and 
the drawbridges are never down. They crown the mountain- 
top you may lose your breath to climb ; they sprinkle the desert 
where your parched lips may find no cooling draught; they 
fleck the snow-wreath when the nipping blast may make you 
turn your back; they breathe unharmed the pestilent vapors 
of the swamp that mean disease, if not death, for you; they 
outride the storm at sea that sends strong men to their last 
account. Where now will you look for birds? 
§14. Anp yet, as skilled labor is always most productive, 
so expert search yields more than random or blundering pur- 
suit. Jmprimis; The more varied the face of a country, the 
more varied its birds. <A place all plain, all marsh, all wood- 
land, yields its particular set of birds, perhaps in profusion ; 
but the kinds will be limited in number. It is of first impor- 
tance to remember this, when you are so fortunate as to have 
choice of a collecting-ground; and it will guide your steps 
aright in a day’s walk anywhere, for it will make you leave 
covert for open, wet for dry, high for low and back again. 
Well-watered country is more fruitful of bird-life than desert or 
even prairie ; warm regions are more productive than cold ones. 
As arule, variety and abundance of birds are in direct ratio to 
diversity and luxuriance of vegetation. Your most valuable as 
well as largest bags may be made in the regions most favored 
botanically, up to the point where exuberance of plant-growth 
mechanically opposes your operations. : 
$15. Searcu for particular birds can only be well directed, 


