As to the pleasures derived from pursuing the science of ornithology 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 enlarge upon this subject _ad infinitum_, but to a field
naturalist these pleasures are well known, and to the closet personage
uncared for. Suffice it to say, that he who takes nature for his
tutor will experience delights indescribable from every animate and
inanimate object 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,
pregnant with truth, endless in extent, eternal 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 immortal pages.--_Rural Bird-Life in
England._
The aspects of nature change ceaselessly, by day and by night, through
the seasons of the year, with every difference 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 herself
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 'possum's rambles. He had a quick eye for the smooth
holes where the squirrels 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._