ot be written but by a scholar and
a gentleman; and no English gentleman in recent times has ever thought
of birds except as flying targets, or flavorous dishes. The only piece
of natural history worth the name in the English language, that I know
of, is in the few lines of Milton on the Creation. The only example of
a proper manner of contribution to natural history is in White's
Letters from Selborne. You know I have always spoken of Bewick as
pre-eminently a vulgar or boorish person, though of splendid honor and
genius; his vulgarity shows in nothing so much as in the poverty of the
details he has collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest
sense, for English ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated
enough to enable him to choose, or arrange.

[5] Sir Arthur Helps. "Animals and their Masters," p. 67.

[6] Ariadne Florentina, vi. 45.

4. Nor can much more be said for the observations of modern science. It
is vulgar in a far worse way, by its arrogance and materialism. In
general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four
articles,--first, the name and estate of the gentleman whose gamekeeper
shot the last that was seen in England; secondly, two or three stories
of doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for
the last fifty years; thirdly, an account of the feathers, from the
comb to the rump, with enumeration of the colors which are never more
to be seen on the living bird by English eyes; and, lastly, a
discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve names which former
naturalists have given to the bird are of any further use, and why the
present author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally,
and to the end of time, accepted.

5. You may fancy this is caricature; but the abyss of confusion
produced by modern science in nomenclature, and the utter void of the
abyss when you plunge into it after any one useful fact, surpass all
caricature. I have in my hand thirteen plates of thirteen species of
eagles; eagles all, or hawks all, or falcons all--whichever name you
choose for the great race of the hook-headed birds of prey--some so
like that you can't tell the one from the other, at the distance at
which I show them to you, all absolutely alike in their eagle or falcon
character, having, every one, the falx for its beak, and every one,
flesh for its prey. Do you suppose the unhappy student is to be allowed
to call them all eagles, or a