less idolaters of Nature, have worshipped her in a truly religious spirit, and have taught us their religion. Nor have our poets been blind or deaf to the sweet Minnesingers of the woods. Thomson, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, have loved them as dearly as Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton. All those prevailing poets have been themselves "musical and melancholy" as nightingales, and often from the inarticulate language of the groves, have they breathed the enthusiasm that inspired the finest of their own immortal strains. "Lonely wanderer of Nature," must every poet be-and though often self-wrapt his wanderings through a spiritual world of his own, yet as some fair flower silently asks his eye to look on it, some glad bird his ear solicits with a song, how intense is then his perception, his emotion how profound, his spirit being thus appealed to, through all its human sensibilities, by the beauty and the joy perpetual even in the most solitary wilderness!

Our moral being owes deep obligation to all who assist us to study nature aright; for believe us, it is high and rare knowledge, to know and to have the true and full use of our eyes. Millions go to the grave in old age without ever having learned it; they were just beginning perhaps to acquire it when they sighed to think that" they who look out of the windows were darkened;" and that, while they had been instructed how to look, sad shadows had fallen on the whole face of Nature, and that the time for those intuitions was gone for ever. But the science of seeing has now found favour in our eyes; and "blessings are with them and eternal praise" who can discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest of nature's works, who can see as distinctly the finger of God in the lustre of the little humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that of "the star of Jove, so beautiful and large," shining

sole in heaven.

Take up now almost any book you may on any branch of Natural History, and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical

scheme of revelation of the sublime varieties of the inferior-as we choose to call it-creation of God, you find high attempts in a humble spirit rather to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and design. With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the day gone by, shewed us a science that was but a skeleton-nothing but dry bones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the day that is now, have been desirous to shew us a living, breathing, and moving body, to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and its spirit. Ere another century elapse, how familiar may men be with all the families of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, with all the interdependencies of their cha racters and their kindreds, perhaps even with the mystery of that instinct which now is seen working wonders, not only beyond the power of reason to comprehend, but of imagination to conceive!

Take up, we say, what book you will, and such is its spirit. There, for example, are these two unpretending, but enlightened volumes, "The British Naturalist," by Mr Mudie, which, we need not add, we recommend to all students, and how much more real knowledge do they contain than many ambitious works we could mention made up of words

words-words-and words, too, as fuzionless as chips-chips-chips? This contribution to natural history, he tells us at once, is sanctioned by no name or authority, and pretends to no systematic arrangement. He does not fear to say that the dictum of authority, and the divisions of system, are the bane of study to the people at large; and is it not, we add, the people at large, whom the people in few should seek to instruct in the wisdom that framed the world? True it is, as Mr Mudie says, that the dictum of authority represses the spirit of enquiry, and that in the divisions of system the parts are so many, and so scattered, that the whole cannot be understood. It were as easy to tell the hour from the disjointed movements of a number of watches jumbled together in a box, as to find "how Nature goes," from the mere dissection of her works.

"I do not want to hear the harangue

thusiastic and genuine observer, Audubon, is at present, by cabinet naturalists, as a romancer unworthy of credit. 'Tis ever so. People sitting in their own parlour, with their feet on the fender, or in the sanctum of some museum, staring at stuffed specimens, imagine themselves naturalists; and in their presumptuous and insolent ignorance, which is often total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have for many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiar with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life.

Take two boys and set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a system in books, having, meanwhile, no access to, or communion with nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied-nor is he any thing else than a slave. But the young naturalist, who takes his first lessons in the fields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation everywhere displays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder, and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. The rich boy is to be envied, nor is he any thing else than a king. The one sits bewildered among words, the other walks enlightened among things; the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substance the very essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve years old he may be a better naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to outlive old Tommy Balmer.

In education-late or early-for heaven's sake let us never separate things and words. They are married in nature; and what God hath put together let no man put asunder 'tis a fatal divorce. Without things, words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than drag out an useless existence in the dark; without words, their stay and support, things unaccountably disappear out of the storehouse, and may be for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, stronger than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for ever happy in its bright prison-house, nor would it flee away had it even

His little hand, the small forefinger up, And bid us listen! and I deem it wise To make him Nature's child.”

Compare the intensity and truth of any natural knowledge insensibly acquired by observation in very early youth, with that corresponding to it picked up in later life from books! In fact, the habit of distinguishing between things as different, or of similar forms, colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and childhood, and boyhood, in a free intercourse and communion with Nature, while we are merely seeking and finding the divine joy of novelty and beauty perpetually occurring before our eyes in all her haunts, may be made the foundation of an accuracy of judgment of inappreciable value as an intellectual endowment. We must all have observed with Professor Rennie, how exceedingly difficult it is for persons arrived at manhood to acquire this power of discriminating objects whose general similarity of appearance deceives a common observer into a belief of their identity; though a little care on the part of a parent or teacher will render it comparatively easy.

So entirely is this true, that we know many observant persons, that is, observant in all things intimately related with their own pursuits, and with the experience of their own early education, who, with all the pains they could take in after life, have never been able to distinguish by name, when they saw them, above half-a-dozen, if so many, of our British singing birds; while as to knowing them by their song, that is wholly beyond the reach of their uninstructed ear, and a shilfa chants to them like a yellow-yoldrin. On seeing a small bird peeping out of a hole

in the eaves, and especially on hearing him chatter, they shrewdly suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does not by any means follow that their suspicions are always verified, as our friend not unfrequently turns out altogether another animal-further the deponent sayeth not; and though, when sitting with her white breast so lovely, out of the "auld clay-bigging," in the window-corner, he cannot mistake Mistress Swallow, yet when flitting in fly-search over the lake, and ever and anon dipping her wing-tips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance that he misnames her Miss Martin.

We could give a hundred-a thousand-ten thousand instances of the most astonishing ignorance shewn even by naturalists of considerable reputation-book and cabinet naturalists-with regard to facts falling under the most obvious, and, as one might think, the most universal observation of men, whether naturalists or not, who have seen the prudence and propriety of walking with their eyes open. But Professor Rennie quotes, and remarks on one in itself quite sufficient for our purpose, from the "highly lauded article" Ornithology, in Rees's Cyclopædia.-"Birds of the same species," says the author, "collect all the same materials, arrange them in the same manner, and make choice of similar situations for fixing the places of their temporary abodes. Wherever they dispose them, they always take care to be accommodated with a shelter; and if a natural one does not offer itself, they very ingeniously make a covering of a double row of leaves, down the slope of which the rain trickles, without entering into the little opening of the nest that lies concealed below." What precious nonsense! What a pack of confusion! Does the Cyclopædist, or rather the Cyclops, for he could have "had but one eye, and that was no piercer," here speak of all birds, or but of some particular species ?

In either case alike is he a dolt. If of all birds, then he forgets, when speaking of the care they always take to be accommodated with shelter, the numerous families which lay their eggs on the bare ground, leaving them exposed the greater part

of the day on the sands of the desert, the sea-beach, or isolated rocks. Accommodate them with shelter, and in a couple of days the shore will be stinking-nor will a single sea-fowl -all addled in the yellow-ever chip the shell. Of what" little opening of the nest" does the perverse and purblind old Monops prate? The wren's? or the eagle's? But the wren (Miss Kitty) most frequently builds her domicile out of the flutter of leaves; on old mossy stumps, on house-walls, or the living rock; and when in hedges, she would laugh at the idea of this dotard providing the little opening of her nest that lies concealed below, with a double row of leaves; for hang the globe in the sunshine or the storm, and St Catherine will sit within, unscared and unscathed, counting her beads-perhaps a score-counting them with her fine-feeling breast that broods in bliss over the priceless pearls.

As for the Eagle, the little opening of his nest doth verily not lie concealed below a covering of a double row of leaves; but, eighteen feet in circumference, (we have measured one,) it lies unconcealed, except by its height from your ogles, mayhap a mile or a league, on a cliff-platform, occasionally no doubt hidden in clouds; and men, who speak what is now called the English tongue, call it an Eyrie.

If the old gentleman be not yet quite dead-and if he be, then we appeal to the most scientific of his surviving descendants-he is hereby humbly requested to have the goodness to inform us of the name of this ingenious bird; and to tell us, in a postscript, if ever, in all his born days, he saw a bird's nest of any kind whatever, on cliff or castle, ground or grove, in bush, tree, hedge, or old man's beard.

But what constant caution is perpetually necessary during the naturalist's perusal even of the very best books! From the very best we can only obtain knowledge at second hand, and this, like a story circulated among village gossips, is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it passes from one to another; but in field study, we go at once to the fountain-head, and obtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the theories and opinions of previous observers.

Hence it is that the utility of books becomes obvious. You witness with your own eyes some puzzling, perplexing, strange, and unaccountable -fact; twenty different statements of it have been given by twenty different ornithologists; you consult them all, and getting a hint from one, and a hint from another, here a glim mer of light to be followed, and there a gloom of darkness to be avoided-why, who knows but that in the end you do yourself solve the mystery, and absolutely become not only happy but illustrious? We cannot deny ourselves and friends the pleasure of perusing, in proof of this, the following passage, which exhibits a characteristic specimen of Professor Rennie's happy style of treating whatever subject comes within the range either of his reading or his observation.

"You pay a visit, for example, to the nest of a dabchick or grebe, (Podiceps,) which you had discovered some days before among reeds at the edge of a pond, and are surprised to find that the eggs have disappeared; but much more so on taking up some of the rude materials of the nest, to see the eggs snugly concealed beneath. The question immediately arises, Did the mother bird thus cover the eggs herself, and if so, for what purpose was it done? If you be not too impatient, (a state of mind exceedingly adverse to accuracy and originality,) you will endeavour to ascertain whether the covering of the eggs was peculiar to this individual, or common to the species, by repeated observation, as frequently as opportunity offers; or, if patience fail you for this, such books as you have access to may be consulted. Look into Linnæus, and all you find is, that this bird builds a floating nest of grass and reeds.' Latham says, the nest is made of water-plants among the reeds, and close to the surface of the water, floating independent.' Willughby, Ray, and Brisson, say not a word about the nest. Fleming says, the 'nest is in marshes of aquatic plants, and made so as to float.' 'They breed,' says Goldsmith,' among reeds and flags, in a floating nest, kept steady by the weeds and margin.' They construct their nest,' says Griffith, evidently copying Temminck, with rushes, &c., interlaced, which they attach to the stems of reeds, resting it on their broken tops, or suffering it to float.' 'Nest large,' according to Jennings, made of aquatic plants not attached to any thing, but floats among

6

the reeds and flags penetrated by water." Belon, who is followed by Gesner, Aldrovand, Jonston, and M. Drapiez, says, 'it nestles near the ground upon some turfy clump in a marsh, difficult of access. 'On our large pools,' says Buffon, they build with reeds and rushes interwoven, and the nest is half dipped in the water, though not entirely afloat, as Linnæus asserts, but shut and attached to the reeds.' Wood subsequently adds, in a note, they construct a floating nest of reeds. They build their nests,' says Hill, floating and loose among the flags'; and 'being altogether unconnected with the reeds among which it floats, it sometimes happens that it is blown from among them into the open lake. In this situation the owner, like a skilful pilot, it is said, steers the nest into a safe harbour, by passing her feet through it.'

"In all these various notices of the nest in question, by the well known na turalists thus consulted, there occurs no mention of any covering of the eggs, though the enquiry has brought under notice some other curious particulars, which, no doubt, a young and ardent observer will be anxious to verify on the nest itself, from which his book-research originated. Some of the authors, it has been seen, assert that the nest floats on water, nay, that it is purposely built to float by the mother bird; while others make no mention of its floating, and some expressly deny it. In a supposed case like this, it may, perhaps, be deemed premature for me to decide; but the nests which have fallen under my observation, agree with those originally described by Belon, in being built on raised clumps in marshes, or at least so supported by water plants as not to be in tended to float. That in consequence of floods these nests may, by accident, have been found floating, it would be wrong to deny, though there can be little doubt that Linnæus, who was much too credulous of wonders, magnified a chance occurrence into a general rule. The story of the mother bird navigating her nest when it has been carried away by a flood, is altogether incredible; for the nest is not only constructed of a bedding of reeds, rushes, and other water plants, more than a foot in thickness, but the feet of the bird are so broad and clumsy, that they could not be thrust through it without entirely destroying its texture.

"Pennant, however, seems to believe this nonsense, for he adds to the account - In these circumstances the halcyon's nest, its floating house, Auctivaga domus,