PLAN OF STUDY, 
“ That the principal aim of a Naturalist ought to be to multiply 
observations,” is laid down as a leading rule by M. Levaillant, 
one of the very^ few who have preferred reading the page of Nature 
in the woods and fields, to the- inferior study of cabinets and 
books ; and hence he was stigmatized, as another enthusiastic and 
genuine observer, Audubon, is at present, by cabinet naturalists, 
as a romancer unworthy of credit. “Theories,” adds M. Le- 
vaillant, “are more easy and more brilliant than observations; but 
it is by observation alone that science can be enriched, while a 
single fact is frequently sufficient to demolish a system.” * To 
all this I most cordially subscribe ; while I recommend whoever 
feels little interest in field study, to read the works of Audubon, 
Knapp, Levaillant, Ray, Reaumur, Wilson, and White, from 
whom if he catch no portion of the ardour which inspired them 
in their beautiful researches, he may conclude that he is too cold 
and too callous ever to become a Naturalist. 
The young Naturalist indeed will find it not only more easy 
and delightful, but greatly more improving, to take his first les- 
sons in the fields, by observing the animated scene which creation 
everywhere displays, when 
Spring 
Comes forth her work of gladness to contrive 
With all her reckless birds upon the wing, f 
than to sit down to study the descriptions given in books, or 
Histoire Naturelle des Pe-roquets, i. 20. One of the few valuable works on 
Natural History, which I found in the Library of the Paris Museum, that is 
not in our Library of the British Museum ; both, I am sorry to say, being 
equally deficient in this department. 
f Childe Harold, Canto iii. 30. 
