There are comparatively few superior ornithological woodsmen, though we are inclined to believe more amongst the naturalists of this country, than of any other. There are some who never learn, though shooting for years; and passages constantly occur in the works of authors, notwithstanding their professions, and however honestly such may have been made, exciting immediate suspicion that they were really little skilled in woodcraft. We know men who have long been bird-collectors, but who have never acquired the ability to distinguish species by their notes, nor in fact otherwise to any considerable extent. On the other hand, we have gone repeatedly on excursions of several miles, in company with naturalists and accomplished woodsmen, for the sole purpose of hearing the note of a single species with which they had not before had an opportunity of becoming acquainted. This has been especially the case with reference to the Prairie Warbler (_Sylvicola discolor_), which is always to be met with in the summer, in the sandy thickets and in neglected fields in New Jersey, and has several notes very peculiar and characteristic. It is by no means desirable, however, to be exclusively a naturalist of the woods, and in fact the greatest degree of accomplishment that can be acquired in this line, entitles one to but a very humble rank as a cultivator of Zoology. There must be a combination of theoretical and practical acquirements, and the gratification of the practical naturalist or the collector will be exactly in proportion to his scientific or systematic information, to be obtained only in the museum and the library. There is an indescribably pitiful display of ignorance and meanness of idea in arrogating, as some writers have done, a superior position for the “field-naturalist” over the “closet-naturalist.” As well might he who navigates a ship presume on being the greatest of astronomers, or the practical gauger pretend to be the only mathematician. Great is life in the woods, say we, and the greatest of all sports is bird-collecting; but, to become a scientific ornithologist, is quite another business, and a very much more considerable consummation. But we have digressed from the Warblers.