22 
FIELD OMNITHOLOGY, 
advise, they tell no small part of the whole story. But this is not enough j indeed, I am not 
sure that an ably conducted ornithological journal is not the better half of your operations. 
Under your editorship of labelling, specimens tell what they know about themselves ; but you 
can tell much more yourself. Let us look at a day's work : You have shot and skinned so 
many birds and laid them away labelled. You have made observations about them before 
shooting, and have observed a number of birds that you did not shoot. You have items of 
haunts and habits, abundance or scarcity ; of manners and actions under special circumstances, 
as of pairing, nesting, laying, rearing young, feeding, migrating, and what not; various notes 
of birds are still ringing in your ears ) and finally, you may have noted the absence of species you 
saw a while before, or had expected to occur in your vicinity. Meteorological and topographi- 
cal items, especially when travelling, are often of great assistance in explaining the occurrences 
and actions of birds. Now you know these things, but very likely no one else does ; and 
you know them at the time, but you will not recollect a tithe of them in a few weeks or months, 
to say nothing of years. Don't trust your memory : it will trip you up ; what is clear now will 
grow obscure ; what is found will be lost. Write down everything while it is fresh in your 
mind ; write it out in full : time so spent now will be time saved in the end, when you oflFer 
your researches to the discriminating public. Don't be satisfied with a dry-as-dust item; 
clothe a skeleton fact, and breathe life into it with tlioughts that glow ; let the paper smell of 
the woods. There 's a pulse in a new fact ; catch the rhythm before it dies. Keep off the 
quicksands of mere memorandum — that means something ''to be remembered," which is just 
what you cannot do. Shun abbreviations ; such keys rust with disuse, and may fail in after 
times to unlock the secret that should have been laid bare in the beginning. Use no signs 
intelligible only to yourself : your note-books may come to be overhauled by others whom 
you would not wish to disappoint. Be sparing of sentiment, a delicate thing, easily degraded 
to drivel : crude enthusiasm always hacks instead of hewing. Beware of literary infelicities : 
*' the written word remains," it may be, after you have passed away; put down nothing for 
your friend's blush, or your enemy's sneer ; write as if a stranger were looking over your 
shoulder. 
Ornithological Book-keeping may be left to your discretion and good taste in the 
details of execution. Each may consult his preferences for rulings, headings, and blank forms 
of all sorts, as well as particular modes of entry. But my experience has been that the entries 
it is advisable to make are too multifarious to be accommodated by the most ingenious formal 
ruling; unless, indeed, you make the conventional heading ''Remarks" disproportionately 
wide, and commit to it everything not otherwise provided for. IMy preference is decidedly for a 
plain page. I use a strongly bound blank book, cap size, containing at least six or eight 
quires of good smooth paper ; but smaller may be needed for travelling, even down to a pocket 
note-book. I would not advise a multiplicity of books, splitting up your record into different 
departments : let it be journal and register of specimens combined. (The registry of your 
own collecting has nothing to do with the register of your cabinet of birds, which is sure to 
include a proportion of specimens from other sources, received in exchange, donated, or pur- 
chased. I speak of this beyond.) I have found it convenient to commence a day's record 
with a register of the specimens secured, each entry consisting of a duplicate of the bird's label 
(see beyond), accompanied by any further remarks I have to offer respecting the particular 
specimens ; then to go on with the full of my day's observations, as suggested in the last para- 
graph. You thus have a "register of collections" in chronological order, told off with an 
unbroken series of numbers, checked with the routine label-items, and continually interspersed 
with the balance of your ornithological studies. Since your private field-number is sometimes 
an indispensable clew to the authentication of a specimen after it has left your own hands, 
never dujpUcate it. If you are collecting other objects of natural history besides birds, still have 
