As to the pleasures derived from pursuing the science of ornithology in nature's interminable range, there are delights the field ornithologist experiences quite unknown to his stay-at-home namesake. For instance, what a thrill of pride courses through him as he clings to the topmost branches of the tallest pine tree, making himself acquainted with the rude cradle of the sparrow-hawk; or when examining the beautiful and richly marked eggs of the windhover, laid bare and nestless in the magpie's old abode, some sixty feet or more in the branches of a towering oak. When, if ever, do our closet naturalists inspect these lovely objects in their elevated cradle? Again, how elated the field naturalist will feel when, after hours of patient watching, he gets a sight of a troop of timid jays, or the woodpecker, busy in his search for food on some noble tree! How elated when, scaling the cliff's rugged side in search of sea birds' eggs, or tramping over the wild and barren moor, he flushes the snipe or ring ousel from its heathery bed, or startles the curlew from its meal in the fathomless marsh! We might enlarge upon this subject _ad infinitum_, but to a field naturalist these pleasures are well known, and to the closet personage uncared for. Suffice it to say, that he who takes nature for his tutor will experience delights indescribable from every animate and inanimate object of the universe; from the tiny blade of grass to the largest forest tree--the tiniest living atom, seemingly without form or purpose, to its gigantic relation of much higher development. The pages of nature's mighty book are unrolled to the view of every man who cares to haunt her sanctuaries. The doctrine it teaches is universal, pregnant with truth, endless in extent, eternal in duration, and full of the widest variety: Upon the earth it is illustrated by endless forms beautiful and grand, and in the trackless ether above, the stars and suns and moons gild its immortal pages.--_Rural Bird-Life in England._ The aspects of nature change ceaselessly, by day and by night, through the seasons of the year, with every difference in latitude and longitude; and endless are the profusion and variety of the results which illustrate the operation of her laws. But, let the productions of different climes and countries be never so unlike, she works by the same methods; the spirit of her teachings never changes; nature herself is always the same, and the same wholesome, satisfying lessons are to be learned in the contemplation of any of her works. We may change our skies, but not our minds, in crossing the sea to gain a glimpse of that bird-life which finds its exact counterpart in our own woods and fields, at the very threshold of our own homes.--_Coues._