ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] 
IRature IRotes : 
Ube Selborne Society's flf>aoa3tne. 
No. 202. 
OCTOBER, 1906. 
Voi.. XVII. 
FIELD NOTES.* 
By the Rev. E. Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock, F.L.S. 
N expert field naturalist lias been well defined as “one 
who knows how to make a note-book, and who keeps one 
properly and regularly.” Few outdoor students, in my 
experience, understand the art of note-making. A keen 
love and enjoyment of nature is quite a different thing from an 
intimate knowledge of how best to catch her transient phases and 
characteristics, and the art of jotting them down in a few well- 
chosen words for future reference in notes of permanent value. 
This is so much the case that the great majority of past and 
present workers have made few notes at all, or have only dis- 
covered after many attempts and failures in note-taking some 
more or less useful method for themselves. In this article I 
shall strictly confine my remarks to field note-making. Study 
notes for literary work are quite another branch of the subject, 
and can be treated of, if required, on another occasion. 
There is only one form of field note-making which I have 
found of any permanent value. It is easily defined and described 
with examples. The sheets must be capable of being arranged 
at once in alphabetical order under their various headings 
without rewyiting. In stating this, I do not speak without fair field 
experience. I began making field-notes in 1870 while at the 
Edinburgh Academy ; and only under the pressure of other and 
more important duties have I ever since abandoned this pleasing 
form of occupation. During the last thirty years I have tried 
every form of note-book and diary, and have finally abandoned 
all of them for the most simple method in which facts can be 
separately recorded. The advantage of the free-sheet system is 
that the notes can be arranged daily in regular and final order. 
In this way they become at once a part of a man’s stock of 
Being the “best part” of a lecture on Field Observation. 
