INTRODUCTION 



Birds, like men, may be looked at from many points of view. 

 Admirable text-books exist that tell us of the material side. 

 But there are many aspects of bird life that he outside the text- 

 books. 



The idea of this book is to try to show something of the 

 animating principle of the bird, how it lives, moves, and has its 

 being, how it reacts to the varying conditions of its environ- 

 ment ; how its wonderful life expresses itself in its equally 

 wonderful and beautiful form. Not that there is anything 

 new in this, but the scope for new treatment is illimitable, 

 especially in view of the new facts constantly coming to light. 



For the most part, the deeper questions relating to bird life 

 • — 'migration and so on — have been dealt with by specialists in 

 spacious volumes not readily accessible to the amiy of young 

 ornithologists who are growing up arormd us. In these cases 

 I have endeavoured to smimiarise the work of the leading 

 authorities : to show so far as my limitations pemait, how our 

 knowledge stands to-day : to give younger readers especially a 

 general view of the subject before they come to grips with the 

 severer technical side. 



As Natural History editor of the " Yorkshire Weekly Post," 

 it has come within my province for the past twelve years to 

 watch week by week the progress of bird-lore. Notes, som,e- 

 times from unexpected quarters, have reached me throwing light 

 on various questions. These I have incorporated in the text 

 in their proper places, together with the conmients held to be 

 appropriate. 



Sometimes the beUef is expressed that the bird as a subject 

 for study is being pla3^ed out. This can never be until the 

 whole problem of life itself is solved. The anatomist and the 

 physiologist may possibly see a nearing end to their task, but for 

 the psychologist and philosopher, for the artist and the poet, 

 the lowliest bird is still a part of the all-surrounding mystery 

 of things against which the human mind is destined ceaselessly 

 to beat. 



