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BIRD-LIFE. 
scientific pursuit, that of the naturalist has its joys and 
pains, the trouble and the reward; yet the pleasure far 
exceeds the pain, and the reward is so great that all 
difficulties to be met with in attaining it are overlooked. 
It has, from time immemorial, ever been difficult to 
become a naturalist, and dangerous to be one; and to 
the present day these difficulties still remain. He who 
would serve his special branch of science aright, must 
become its willing slave—body and soul. The body must 
undergo fatigue and danger; the soul struggle against 
the poisonous influences of misunderstanding, contempt, 
hatred, and the accusation of heresy: thus, bodily and 
mental troubles and sorrows are not wanting in the 
pursuit of Natural History. She recognizes but one 
motto :—“ To examine is holier than to believe.” Armed 
with this talisman she disperses her knights errant to 
every quarter of the known globe, and to it we owe her 
many acquisitions. It is this motto which sends scientific 
men from Pole to Pole, from east to west; in the African 
desert or the glaciers of the Alps; to equatorial swamps 
and primaeval forests, prolific of fever, whose very air 
breathes poison: it is this device which enables them 
cheerfully to brave every danger. It was in acting up to 
this motto that Pliny lost his life, and Galileo his bodily 
and spiritual freedom; this is the motto which scandalizes 
all those who would look upon the reverse as the highest 
aim of human wisdom. Like Vesuvius, who buried the 
ancient naturalist under her ashes, they seek to hurl the 
dying embers of their wrath at us in the form of 
proscriptions, &c., trying again to darken the earth 
under the ashes of their dogmas. In our days, fortunately, 
their influence is no longer capable of quenching the light 
of heaven; and in a short time hence, such dross will 
