Page:Bird-lore Vol 04.djvu/196

 On Journal Keeping

Ev ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

HEN first I went into the West. just twenty-one years ago, with the intention of using my eyes and learning all I could of nature in the wilds. a friend, an old natur- alist. said to me: “Do not fail to keep a journal of

everything you see and hear.‘

I could not see just why. but I bad faith enough in his opinion to begin a journal, which I have kept ever since and hope to keep to the end My friend did not tell me, probably did not know. what good purpose was to be served by the journal: but I think it came to mt- gradually as the years went by, The older I grow the more I see and realize the value of the daily note of the truth, the simple fact, bald, untooled and incomplete perhaps, but honestly given as it was found. I would have each observer in the natural history world keep a journal on the lines already sketched in BIRDeLORE, and enter therein daily-— not from faded memory a month laterirwhatever facts he can observe, fully embellished with such diagrams, sketches, or photographs as will help more fully to set forth the facts. He may wonder at the time what good end it will serve, and one might answer that it is always useful to have a record of one's own doings; or yet more truly, that writing a fact makes one observe it better. But be very sure that all past experience proves it to he a good thing—how good and how valu- able one may not learn for years. may never learn at all. But we do know that it is always good to follow the truth for its own sake; and there is no way that more quickly makes some returns than the Nature Journal, It always pays in the end There never yet was a sincere, full record made of the testimony of the senses that did not in the end‘ prove a priceless treasury of fact. ‘The Journal of a Citizen of Paris,‘ 'Pepys’ Diary,’ ‘Harmon‘s Journal,‘ ‘Lewis & Clark‘s Journal,’ are familiar