I will give you a sketch of our manner of passing the time. We are up before day, and our toilette is soon made. If the day is to be spent at drawing, Lehman and I take a walk, and Ward, his gun, dog, and basket, returning when hungry or fatigued, or both. We draw uninterruptedly till dusk, after which, another walk, then write up journals, and retire to rest early. When we have nothing on hand to draw, the guns are cleaned over night, a basket of bread and cheese, a bottle with old whiskey, and some water, is prepared. We get into a boat, and after an hour of hard rowing, we find ourselves in the middle of most extensive marshes, as far as the eye can reach. The boat is anchored, and we go wading through mud and water, amid myriads of sand-flies and mosquitoes, shooting here and there a bird, or squatting down on our hams for half an hour, to observe the ways of the beautiful beings we are in pursuit of. This is the way in which we spend the day. At the approach of evening, the cranes, herons, pelicans, curlews, and the trains of blackbirds are passing high over our heads, to their roosting places; then we also return to ours. If some species are to draw the next day, and the weather is warm, they are _outlined_ that same evening, to save them from incipient putridity. I have ascertained that _feathers_ lose their brilliancy almost as rapidly as flesh or skin itself, and am of opinion that a bird alive is 75 per cent more rich in colours than twenty-four hours after its death; we therefore skin those first which have been first killed, and the same evening. All this, added to our other avocations, brings us into the night pretty well fatigued. Such, my dear friend, is the life of an active naturalist; and such, in my opinion, it ought to be. It is nonsense ever to hope to see in the closet what is only to be perceived—as far as the laws, arrangements and beauties of ornithological nature is concerned,—by that devotion of time, opportunities, and action, to which I have consecrated my life, not without hope that science may benefit by my labours.