Ornithology. 
45 
Understanding in some measure the difficulties that surround 
the pathway of investigation in other departments of natural 
history we would not detract from their magnitude by invidious 
comparison, but feel impelled to say in passing that the en¬ 
tomologist or microscopist may “sit under his own vine and 
fig tree” and collect more material for study in one brief hour 
than could the ornithologist in a month of toil remote from the 
comforts and repose of his home. The former, with his little 
net, a few vials and paper boxes—the latter still less encumbered 
—is master of any situation. The geologist, with hammer and 
a receptacle for carrying his trophies—the botanist, with an 
epitomized herbarium—the conchologist, with his basket, is 
always ready for occasion. How differently with the ornithol¬ 
ogist. His outfit is expensive, complicated and cumbersome. 
He must have a suitable gun, varied ammunition, instruments 
for skinning, preservatives of the most deadly poisonous char¬ 
acter, and ample arrangements for transporting his collections 
without injury to the plumage—and, lastly, the integrity of his 
material is to be maintained at the reputed valuation of civil 
liberty, namely, .eternal vigilance , for his foes are legion. 
All of his processes are tedious and patience-taxing, from the 
cautious, stealthy search through forest and fen, through sedge 
and swamp, thickets, and wherever, for his birds, to the carefully 
noting their distinctive habits of flight, feeding, pairing, nesting, 
rearing their young, and so forth. If his collections are merely 
for his study, the skins are all that is required. If for museum 
purposes they must be mounted, and this affords us an oppor¬ 
tunity to suggest parenthetically that immediate measures 
should be adopted to provide funds for this important work. 
It is altogether too onerous for private means, and to secure 
contributions of either money or mounted specimens we must 
show that we are earnestly at work by displaying mounted 
birds. It is an observed fact that no department of a general 
museum impresses the popular attention or the popular purse 
so much as mounted and tastefully arranged birds. With this 
pardonable digression, we return to say that the foregoing re- 
viewal of the difficulties in the way of the ornithological col¬ 
lector explains why so many who commence the study of the 
