ple is it, that it appears some ingenious friend, to whom he showed it in manuscript, objected to it that it was no plan of study at all. What is its method? Why this and no more-but then how much! First, to observe a fact or circumstance in the fields, then to endeavour to discover the design it was intended to serve by the great Creator, and subsequently to examine the statements to be met with in books, in order to compare them with what you have actually observed. On this plan, he rightly says, any person with a little care may become a tolerably good naturalist, the first walk he takes in the fields, without much knowledge of books; on the opposite and too current plan, much study is indispensable to enable any person to master the theory or system, in relation to which the observed facts are supposed to have their whole value and importance. He agrees with the leading rule laid down by the illustrious M. Levaillant, that the principal aim of a naturalist ought to be to multiply observationsthat theories are more easy and more brilliant indeed than observations; but it is by observation alone that science can be enriched, while a single fact is frequently sufficient to demolish a system. Levaillant was himself one who preferred reading the page of nature in the woods and fields to the inferior study of cabinets and books-and hence, Professor Rennie observes, he was stigmatized, as another enthusiastic 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 every where 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 a 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 the wings of a dove, for already is it at rest. On this principle, it is indeed surprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the most interesting parts of natural history; and in illustration of that, Professor Rennie aptly quotes a few of Coleridge's beautiful lines to the nightingale :

“That strain again!

Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who capable of no articulate sound,

Mars all things with his imitative lisp,

How he would place his hand beside his ear,
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 flysearch over the lake, and ever and anon dipping her wingtips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance that he misnames her Miss Marten.

We could give a hundred-a thousand-ten thousand instances of the most astonishing ignorance shown even by naturalists of considerable reputation-book and cabinet naturalists with regard to facts falling under the most ob

vious, 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 Reese'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 yellowever chip the shell. Of what " little openings 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. Catharine 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 of even 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 glimmer 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 the 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