Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1883 — A Feld Naturalist. [ARTICLE]

A Feld Naturalist.

Forty years ag«, or more, a small, brightly-spotted turtle was described as living near Philadelphia, and two miserable specimens were sent to Prof. Agassiz. It was called Muhlenberg’s turtle, and since then not one has been seen until last summer. My friend has always been on the lookout, never failing to pick up or turn over every small turtle he met on the meadows or along the creek, and examine whether the marks on its under shell were those of the lost species. Finally, one of the ditches in the meadow was drained off to be repaired, and there,within a short distance, were, picked up six Muhlenberg turtles! If you go to Cambridge, Mass., you can see four of them alive and healthy to-day. They could easily have gone out of that ditch into other ditches, and so on into the creek; but, if they ever did, they haVe succeeded for twenty years in escaping some pretty sharp eves. This little incident has a moral for us in two ways. One is, that often the apparent rarity of an animal comes from the fact that we don’t know where to look for it; and the other, that it takes a practiced eye to know it when we have found it, and to take carfe that it doesn’t get lost sight of again. Practice your methods of observation, then, without ceasing. You can not make discoveries in any other way, And the cultivation of the habit will be of inestimable advantage to you. This is the merest hint of how, with* out going away from home, by always keeping ids eyes open, a man, or a boy or a girl can study, to the great advantage and enjoyment not only of himself (or herself), but to the help of all the rest of us. I should like to tell you how patiently this naturalist watches the ways of the wary birds and small game he loves; how those sunflsh and shy darters forget that he is looking quietly down through the still water, and go -on with their daily life as he wants to witness it; how he drifts silently at midnight, hid in his boat, close to the timid heron, and sees him strike at his prey; or how, concealed in the topmo -t branches of a leafy tree, he overlooks the water-birds drilling their littlqjones, and smiles at the play of a pair of rare otters, whose noses would not be in sight an instant did they suppose any one was looking at them. But I can not recount all his vigils and ingenious experiments, or the entertaining facts they bring to our knowledge, since my object now is only to give you a suggestion of hpw much one man may do and learn on a single farm in the most thickly settled part of the United States. —Ernes t Inyer#oU, in M Nicholas. Infant baptism increased in the Southern Method'st Episcopal Church from 14,739 in 1866 to 27,205 in 1888.