I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds.

To repay evils with kindness is the religion I was taught to practise, and this will forever be my rule.

On landing at New York I caught the yellow fever by walking to the bank at Greenwich to get the money to which my father's letter of credit entitled me. The kind man who commanded the ship that brought me from France, whose name was a common one, John Smith, took particular charge of me, removed me to Morristown, N. J., and placed me under the care of two Quaker ladies who kept a boarding - house. To their skilful and untiring ministrations I may safely say I owe the prolongation of my life.

During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks.

There is the morass, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, whereby one treads down the forests of Labrador; and the unexpected bunting or sylvia which perchance, and indeed as if by chance alone, you now and then see flying before you, or hear singing from the ground creeping plant.

I wish I had eight pairs of hands, and another body to shoot the specimens.

Almost every day, instead of going to school when I ought to have gone, I usually made for the fields, where I spent the day.