CHAPTER III. 
VARIOUS SUGGESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FIELD-WORK. 
§12.-To BE A GOOD COLLECToR, and nothing more, is a 
small affair; great skill may be acquired in the art, without 
a single quality commanding respect. One of the most vulgar, 
brutal and ignorant men I ever knew was a sharp collector and 
an excellent taxidermist. Collecting stands much in the same 
relation to ornithology that the useful and indispensable office 
of an apothecary bears to the duties of a physician. A field- 
naturalist is always more or less of a collector; the latter is 
sometimes found to know almost nothing of natural history 
worth knowing. The true ornithologist goes out to study birds 
alive and destroys some of them simply because that is the 
only way of learning their structure and technical characters. 
There is much more about a bird than can be discovered in 
its dead body—how much more, then, than can be found out 
from its stuffed skin! In my humble opinion the man who 
only gathers birds, as a miser, money, to swell his cabinet, 
and that other man who gloats, as miser-like, over the same 
hoard, both work ona plane far beneath where the enlightened 
naturalist stands. One looks at Nature, and never knows that 
she is beautiful; the other knows she is beautiful, as even a 
corpse may be; the naturalist catches her sentient expression, 
and knows how beautiful she is! I would have you to know 
and love her; for fairer mistress never swayed the heart of 
man. Aim high!—press on, and leave the halfway-house of 
mere collectorship far behind in your pursuit of a delightful 
study, nor fancy the closet its goal. 
, §18. Brrps may be sought anywhere, at any time; they 
should be sought everywhere, at all times. Some come about 
your doorstep to tell their stories unasked. Others spring up 
before you as you stroll in the field, like the flowers that enticed 
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