Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/18

2 persons can get much help. I confess that scarcely any argument could appeal more strongly to my nature than this. For I think that the study of natural history fails of its finest fruit if it does not lead us to regard living creatures generally with a kindly and sympathetic interest which tends to make all needless sacrifice of their lives more and more repugnant to our feelings. The first steps may have to be taken through blood, and I must own that in my boyhood I was murderous in heart, but not in hand, for I had no gun, only a catapult; and for this I am thankful. I seldom killed anything, while the hours I spent in stalking my game and watching for a chance of getting a fair shot taught me more about the personal habits of birds than I could have learned in any other way. Since that I have shot a great many beautiful and harmless birds with ever-increasing reluctance, but there was no other means of becoming acquainted with them. The descriptions in Jerdon and Barnes and Oates all presuppose a specimen in your hand, to be measured with a foot-rule and examined feather by feather. There was no museum to which I could resort, and it was seldom my lot to fall in with anybody who could enlighten me if I asked, What bird is that? Most gladly therefore would I try to make atonement now by helping others to know without killing, as far as it lies in me.

But I am afraid that the kind friends who ask me to write an account of the Birds of Bombay have a very faint idea of the difficulties of the task. In the first place nobody knows, till he has tried it, how difficult a matter it is to make such an object as a bird in a