10 ESTHETIC RELATIONS OF BIRDS. 



birds, their grace of motion and musical powers, we must 

 know them. Then, too, we will be attracted by their 

 high mental development, or what I have elsewhere 

 spoken of as "their human attributes. Man exhibits 

 hardly a trait which he will not find reflected in the Hfe 

 of a bird. Love, hate ; courage, fear ; anger, pleasure ; 

 vanity, modesty ; virtue, vice ; constancy, fickleness ; gen- 

 erosity, selfishness ; wit, curiosity, memory, reason — we 

 may find them all exhibited in the lives of birds. Birds 

 have thus become symbolic of certain human character- 

 istics, and the more common species are so interwoven in 

 our art and literature that by name at least they are 

 known to all of us." 



The sight of a bird or the sound of its voice is at all 

 times an event of such significance to me, a source of 

 such unfailing pleasure, that when I go afield with those 

 to whom birds are strangers, I am deeply impressed by 

 the comparative barrenness of their world, for they live 

 in ignorance of the great store of enjoyment which might 

 be theirs for the asking. 



I count each day memorable that brought me a new 

 friend among the birds. It was an event to be recorded 

 in detail. A creature which, up to that moment, existed 



ture, 1889. The Hawks and Owls of the United States in their Rela- 

 tion to Agriculture, prepared under the Direction of C. Hart Mer- 

 riam, by A. K. Fisher; Bulletin No. 3, ibid., 1893. The Common 

 Crow of the United States, by Walter B. Barrows and E. A. Schwarz; 

 Bulletin No. 6, ibid., 1895. Preliminary Report on the Food of 

 Woodpeckers, by P. E. L. Beal ; Bulletin No. 7, ibid., 1895. (See also 

 other papers on the food of birds in the Annual Report and Year- 

 book of the United States Department of Agriculture.) Birds as 

 Protectors of Orchards, by E. H. Forbush ; Bulletin No. 3, Massachu- 

 setts State Board of Agriculture, 1895, pp. 20-33. The Crow in Mas- 

 sachusetts, by E. H. Forbush; Bulletin No. 4, ibid., 1896. How 

 Birds affect the Farm and Garden, by Florence A. Merriam ; re- 

 printed from " Forest and Stream," 1896, 16mo, pp. 31. Price, 5 

 cents. 



