10 
ON THE LESSER GUILLEMOT 
which it has a right to occupy, and has unfolded its intir 
mate connection with physiology and geology. 
Discussions that have for their object the enlargement 
and more accurate knowledge of such a science, will always 
be candidly appreciated by a mind truly philosophical, 
though they may be destitute of the parade of diagrams, 
or the mazy ingenuities of political arithmetic. The period 
is long past when flippant sneers at the patient and neces- 
sarily minute labours of the naturalist were received as wit ; 
it is now practically known that it is infinitely easier to ri- 
dicule than to reason ; and that nothing is so contemptible 
as contempt from ignorance. 
Another frequent source of error in specific distinctions 
may obviously be found in the practice of determining spe- 
cies merely from the examination of stuffed specimens, with 
little of that previous and necessary preparation, alone to 
be derived from the frequent and continued habit of ob- 
serving animals in their living state, and ranging over their 
native haunts untrammelled by persecution or domestical, 
tion. It could hardly be expected that museums alone 
could confer that visus eruditus, so necessary and useful in 
discriminating animals from each other, as it is in other 
subjects of comparison. There is a physiognomy that 
marks diff'erent species, as individuals of the same species 
are often easily distinguished, when we have frequent op- 
portunities of observing them, which, although difficult to 
be described, is yet strongly felt by the experienced, and 
which often affords the hint for the detection of more tan- 
gible grounds of difference. What is it chiefly but this that 
renders the rude fisherman or woodman often more accurate 
in specifically distinguishing his native animals than the 
systematic naturalist, — or which enables the shepherd to 
know each individual of his flock of many hundreds ? — - 
differences in their aspect, wliich by others are inappreci- 
