A BIRD LOVER.* EZRA CORNELL bad certainly a catholic idea

of a University when he said : "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." When W. E. D. Scott was admitted as a Freshman to the Cornell University, the

founder's conception was not fully realised, and quite possibly never will be. Anyhow, there were no classes in special branches of zoology, and Mr. Scott's chief work lay outside

his College studies. Its earliest form may be thought to contrast with the title of "bird lover," for it was the art of stuffing birds. He began with preserving the skin of a king- fisher which he had shot. The mounted bird was, of course, a more difficult matter. Meanwhile, the study of bird life was carried on with continuous energy. The student ex- changed Cornell for Harvard, where his mother, with an admirable devotion to her son's education, took a house. The first College vacation was spent at Plainfield, New Jersey, and resulted in a collection of some two hundred specimens. Like- minded companions were soon found at Cambridge, and the

" Nuttall Ornithological Club" was founded. Then came a vacation trip to Virginia, and in the following academical year the student's "first original contribution to science" in a paper modestly entitled "Partial List of the Summer Birds of Kanawha County, West Virginia." In process of time—

to pass over many interesting details of study—the question of livelihood became urgent. The first answer was found in New York, at a shop where birds' skins were prepared for sale. The young man asked for a job, was set to work on "twelve or fifteen birds, none of them as large as a robin," and in forty minutes, not a little to the proprietor's astonishment, had -skinned them, and skinned them well. Regular employment followed, and a wage of £6 a week was earned :—

"During the three months I spent in this shop my time was occupied almost exclusively in skinning native song-birds for millinery purposes. Early every morning the local gunners from Long Island, New Jersey, and the environments of New York would appear at the shop with the previous day's bag of birds. Nothing larger than a wood-thrush was accepted. About three hundred and fifty or four hundred birds were received on an average each day. These were chiefly the following species: song-sparrows, white-throated sparrows, fox-sparrows, swamp- sparrows, various kinds of warblers, titmice, nuthatches, wrens, the smaller blackbirds, swallows, and thrushes. Bluebirds and cedar-birds were considered by far the most desirable, there being a great demand for them at that time for ladies' hats. Something like seven or eight cents apiece were paid for these birds, so the man who killed his forty or fifty per day made good wages."

Sober-plumaged birds were little valued, and were touched up with feathers from brighter creatures, with, of course, most incongruous results, pleasing, however, it would seem, to New York beauty.

Mr. Scott makes two comments on this narrative. The first is to insist on the value of manual training. Probably at that time he knew more about birds than all but some half-dozen men in the States, but it was his manual skill that obtained employment for him. The second we give in his own words:— " The other point is the change in public sentiment with regard to the use of birds for millinery purposes. Legisla- tion has not been so vital a factor in this achievement as public sentiment. Anything in the way of study or reflection which brings home forcibly to the student or thinker the economic and aesthetic values of organic life, is productive of a solicitude only now beginning to be awakened. So far-reaching are our unintentional acts in changing the fauna or the flora of a given region that great care and foresight must be exercised. The ensuing results are prodigious. The extinction of a given kind of plant or animal may be the result. Hence all consideration should be given to positive intentional acts, for the wave of results widens from a centre of action as do the waves from a stone cast into water."

Public sentiment must be further advanced in the States than

• The Story of a Bird Lover. By William Earl Dodge Boat. New York: BliarthanshiP of Bed. BY Blocs Annie Steel. London: W. Bei"'

The Outlook Company. [Oa. net.] mann. [6a.]

it inhere. The mass of women is untouched by it. At the bidding of fashion they will adorn themselves at any cost of suffering to the bird tribes. Pope seems to have been right when he gave the tentative and doubtful form to his famous

couplet Narcissa's nature, tolerably mild,

To make a wash would hardly stew a child."

Early in 1874 the bird-shop was deserted for a position, leas lucrative but more congenial, in Princeton College, where Mr. Scott became acting curator of the museum. Much of the year was spent in various journeys for professional pur- poses. Colorado, the coast and the prairies of Florida, the coasts of Virginia and of New England, and Arizona were among the places visited. Everywhere there is the melancholy contrast between what was to be seen a quarter of a century ago and what is to be seen now. Happily, the sense that destruction must not go on unchecked has been awakened on both sides of the Atlantic, and the future, it may be hoped, will do something to repair the havoc of the past. It is a genuine pleasure to read what Mr. Scott says in his chapter, "Bird Life in England." "Nowhere," he writes, "are wild or domesticated birds so much a part of the people's lives as in England." He was astonished at the multitudes that could be seen at every turn of a railway journey, and at their un- expected presence in the midst of great cities. '

But it is not in birds only that Mr. Scott interests us. His Irish setter 'Grouse' can hardly fail to become one of the famous dogs of literature. We wish that we had space to describe how he was cured of gun-shyness, and nursed through an attack that looked very like hydrophobia,— "during two weeks, relays of College students watched with him at night, administering beef and brandy." When he recovered he had to be taught all his accomplishments again. These were, indeed, remarkable. He would bring nestlings for his master's inspection, and if they were not wanted he would take them back. This latter action implies a rare sagacity. And he had a finely developed conscience. Many dogs have this in a rudimentary state. In 'Grouse' it prompted to restitution. On one occasion, worn out by a long course of vegetable diet, he stole a ham, of which a few morsels had been given him. But he could not eat it. That same evening he induced his master to follow him, showed him the ham lying on a fallen palmetto leaf, and begged, so to speak, for pardon.

A scarcely less remarkable creature was Venado,' the deer, found when a fawn some three weeks old, and brought up by hand. Venaclo's ' chief delight was to entice the dogs—one of them, at least, a trained deer-hunter—on excursions among the hills. In a day or so the party would return, the deer in the very pink of condition, the dogs "so thin and ravenous that only small portions of food could be given them at con- siderable intervals." How did these strange companions occupy themselves ? What was the fascination that com- pelled the dogs to endure such hardships ? Who knows ? At night the whole company slept in a heap on the veranda, the deer in the middle, and the cats on the top. On rainy' days, or when hindered from his excursions (the dogs were wanted to guard against predatory Indians), Penedo ' would come into the house, and rest himself on a sofa.

Before we take leave of Mr. Scott's book we must refer our readers to his last chapter," The Naturalist's Vision," in which he describes what he calls a "laboratory for the study of live birds." He has six rooms in which between four and five hundred individuals are under constant observation. To this work the whole time of an assistant and much of Mr. Scott's are given up. The object aimed at is to know them as individuals. The individuality of the dog is familiar enough ; but that of the bird is almost a new idea. To what results this knowledge may lead is a large subject. The history of the dog gives a hint of its possibilities, but we cannot enter upon it here.