NATURE AT FIRST HAND. 
When beauty, blushing, from her bed 
Arose to bathe in morning- dew, 
The sun, just lifting- up his head, 
The vision saw and back withdrew 
Behind a cloud, with edges red: 
"Till beauty," then he coyly said, 
"Shall veil her peerless form divine 
I may not let my glory shine." 
ftS TO the pleasures derived from 
pursuing the science of ornith- 
ology in nature's interminable 
range, there are delights the 
field ornithologist experiences quite 
unknown to his stay-at-home namesake. 
For instance, what a thrill of pride 
courses through him as he clings to the 
topmost branches of the tallest pine 
tree, making himself acquainted with 
the rude cradle of the sparrow-hawk; 
or when examining the beautiful and 
richly marked eggs of the windhover, 
laid bare and nestless in the magpie's old 
abode, some sixty feet or more in the 
branches of a towering oak. When, if 
ever, do our closet naturalists inspect 
these lovely objects in their elevated 
cradle? Again, how elated the field 
naturalist will feel when, after hours of 
patient watching, he gets a sight of a 
troop of timid jays, or the woodpecker, 
busy in his search for food on some 
noble tree! How elated when, scaling 
the cliff's rugged side in search of sea 
birds' eggs, or tramping over the wild 
and barren moor, he flushes the snipe 
or ring ousel from its heathery bed, 
or startles the curlew from its meal in 
the fathomless marsh! We might en- 
large upon this subject ad infinitum, but 
to a field naturalist these pleasures are 
well known, and to the closet person- 
age uncared for. Suffice it to say, that 
he who takes nature for his tutor 
will experience delights indescribable 
from every animate and inanimate ob- 
ject of the universe; from the tiny 
blade of grass to the largest forest 
tree — the tiniest living atom, seemingly 
without form or purpose, to its gigantic 
relation of much higher development. 
The pages of nature's mighty book are 
unrolled to the view of every man who 
cares to haunt her sanctuaries. The 
doctrine it teaches is universal, preg- 
nant with truth, endless in extent, eter- 
nal in duration, and full of the widest 
variety. Upon the earth it is illustrated 
by endless forms beautiful and grand, 
and in the trackless ether above, the 
stars and suns and moons gild its im- 
mortal pages. — Rural Bird-Life in Eng- 
land. 
The aspects of nature change cease- 
lessly, by day and by night, through 
the seasons of the year, with every dif- 
ference in latitude and longitude; and 
endless are the profusion and variety 
of the results which illustrate the 
operation of her laws. But, let the 
productions of different climes and 
countries be never so unlike, she works 
by the same methods; the spirit of her 
teachings never changes; nature her- 
self is always the same, and the same 
wholesome, satisfying lessons are to be 
learned in the contemplation of any of 
her works. We may change our skies, 
but not our minds, in crossing the sea 
to gain a glimpse of that bird-life which 
finds its exact counterpart in our own 
woods and fields, at the very threshold 
of our own homes. — Coues. 
The boy was right, in a certain sense, 
when he said that he knew nature when 
she passed. Alone, he had hunted 
much in the woods day and night. He 
knew the tall trees that were the coons' 
castles, and the high hills of the 'pos- 
sum's rambles. He had a quick eye 
for the smooth holes where the squir- 
rels hid or the leafy hammocks where 
they dozed the heated hours away. 
The tangles where the bob-whites 
would stand and sun themselves stood 
out to him at a glance, and when the 
ruffed grouse drummed he knew his 
perch and the screens to dodge behind 
as he crept up on him.- — Baskett. 
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