Handbook of field and general ornithology : a manual of the structure and classification of birds / with instructions for collecting and preserving specimens.

  • Coues, Elliott, 1842-1899.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of field and general ornithology : a manual of the structure and classification of birds / with instructions for collecting and preserving specimens. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    46/360 (page 34)
    sentiment, a delicate thing, easily degraded to drivel; crude enthusi- asm always hacks instead of hewing. Beware of literary infelicities ; “the written word remains,” it may he, after you have passed away ; put down nothing for your friend’s blush, or your enemy’s sneer; write as if a stranger were looking over your shoulder. Ornithological Book-keeping may he left to your discretion and good taste in the details of execution. Each may consult his preferences for rulings, headings, and blank forms of all sorts, as well as particular modes of entry. But my experience has been that the entries it is advisable to make are too multifarious to be accommodated by the most ingenious formal ruling; unless, indeed, you make the conventional heading “ Kemarks ” disproportionately wide, and commit to it everything not otherwise provided for. My preference is decidedly for a plain page. I use a strongly bound blank book, cap size, containing at least six or eight quires of good smooth paper; but smaller may be needed for travelling, even down to a pocket note-book. I would not advise a multiplicity of books, splitting up your record into different departments: let it be journal and register of specimens combined. (The registry of you7' own collecting has nothing to do with the register of your cabinet of birds, which is sure to include a proportion of specimens from other sources, received in exchange, donated, or purchased. I speak of this beyond.) I have found it convenient to commence a day’s record with a register of the specimens secured, each entry consisting of a duplicate of the bird’s label (see beyond), accompanied by any further remarks I have to make respecting the particular specimens ; then to go on with the full of my day’s observations, as suggested in the last paragraph. You thus have a register of collections in chronological order, told off with an unbroken series of numbers, checked with the routine label-items, and continually interspersed with the balance of your ornithological studies. Since your private field-number is sometimes an indispensable clew to the authentication of a specimen after it has left your own hands, never duplicate it. If 3mu are collecting other objects of natural history besides birds, still have but one series of numbers ; duly enter your mammal, or mineral, or whatever it is, in its place, with the number under which it happens to fall. Be scrupulously accurate with these and all other figures, as of dates and measurements. Always use black ink ; lead-pencilling is never safe. Labelling.—This should never be neglected. It is enough to make a sensitive ornithologist shiver to see a specimen without that indispensable appendage—a label. I am sorry to observe that the routine labelling of most collections is far from being satisfactory. A well-appointed label is something more than a slip of paper with the bird’s name on it, and is still defective if, as is too often the