SEN'I‘IMENT OF ()liNI'l‘ll()L()GY. 9 Wordsworth’s verses of their birds, how sadly mutilated what re- mained Would be! lint why leave a knowledge of birds to poets and naturalists? G0 yourself to the field and learn that birds do not exist solely in books, but are concrete. sentient beings. whose acquaintance may bring.r you more unalloycd happiness than the wealth of the Indies. John Bur- roughs understands this when he writes of the study of birds: “ There is a fascination about it quite overpowering. it fits so well with other things—with flshinrr. hunting, farming. walking, annping out—with all that takes one to the fields and woods. One may go a blackberry- ing and make some rare discovery: or while driving his cow to pas- ture, hear a new song, or make a new observation. Secrets lurk on all sides. There is news in every bush. What no man ever saw before may the next moment be revealed to you. What a new interest the woods have! How you long to explore every nook and corner of them ‘. ” lluman friends may pass beyond our ken. but our list of acquaint- ances in the bird world increases to the end and shows no vacancies. The marsh the Blackbirds loved may become the site of a factory. but no event on the calendar is more certain than that in due time and place we shall hear the tinkling chorus of the epauleted minstrels rising and falling on the crisp morning air.

“ . . . . Time may come, when never more

The wilderness shall bear the lion roar

But. loner as eoek shall crow from household perch To rouse the dawn. soft gales shall speed thy wing, And thy erratic voice be l'aitlit'ul to the spring; !“

The woods of our youth may disappear, but the Thrushes will always sing for us, and their voices, endeared by cherished associa- tions, arouse echoes of a hundred songs and awaken memories before which the years will vanish.