Alabama, ip 13. 39 



few simple shelter-boxes, a few handfuls of grain, and a few 

 pounds of fat pork when in exchange for them you may have, even 

 in winter's deariness, the woodpeckers, chickadees, crows, and 

 many other winter "residents" and "visitants?" Surely, no right 

 hearted man or boy can prefer solitude to the company of cheerful 

 and beautiful feathered friends. 



Don't Make Bird or Egg "Collections." — Learn to take broad 

 views — bird's eye views, if you please — of the bird-world. Con- 

 sider how you can promote its enjoyment, its betterment, and its 

 perpetuation. Think not that in order to take an interest in birds 

 it is necessary to buy a gun and a bushel of cartridges. Don't 

 think that a badly made bird-skin in a smelly drawer is as pleasing 

 an object in the sight of God or man as the living bird would be. 

 Do not, I beg you, make a "collection of bird-skins" ; for the "bird- 

 skin habit," when given free rein, becomes a scourge to the bird 

 world. 



Do not think that ornithology is the science of dead birds, 

 named in a dead language ; or that an attic room is the best field 

 for the study of birds. Study bird-life, not merely the mummied 

 remains of dead birds. And, finally, don't collect eggs ! They 

 teach no useful lesson. The majority of them have no beauty, 

 and are as meaningless as marbles. The pursuit of them is inter- 

 esting, I grant, but the possession nearly always palls. The col- 

 lector of eggs destroys life, fearfully, and has nothing for all his 

 labors and pains. 



If you think enough of birds to mount, or have mounted, 

 every fine specimen that you kill — aside from legitimate game — 

 then you will be justified in forming a collection. There is some 

 excuse for collections of well-mounted birds, especially those that 

 are presented to schools, where thousands of young people may 

 study them ; but wild life is now becoming so scarce that the 

 making of large private collections, for the benefit of one man, is 

 a sin against nature. 



