The Romance of Ornithology 



By Joseph Grinnell 



The birds must know. Who wisely sings 



Will sing as they. 

 The common air has generons wings : 



Songs make their way. 

 \\'hat l)ir(l is that? The ^ong is good. 



And eager eye^ 

 Go peering through the dusky wood 



In glad surprise; 

 The hirds must know. 



- — Helen Hunt Jackson. 



As everybody knows, ornithology means a discourse about birds — and 

 people have discoursed about birds ever since spoken or written language gave 

 us the means of exchanging thoughts. 



In the l')il)lical history of the creation, birds occurred in the fifth epoch of 

 time, when the evolution of grass and herbs and trees and seeds and fruits had 

 made for them a paradise. With the grass and trees and seeds and fruits had 

 evolved a variable diet for the feathered folk, and by instinct they have continued 

 to follow after their food, migrating on merry tours the wide world over. Lovers 

 of them from earliest dates have discoursed of their ways and means, of their 

 habits, their favorite resorts, their uses relative to ctiltivation of lands, their 

 faults in connection with civilization. Studer.ts of nature have divided the birds 

 into "classes" and "species," as the human race itself is divided. .\s "order is 

 heaven's first law." ornithologists have taught us to distinguish it in the study 

 of l)irds ; and so we have the '"groups," always with reference to individual 

 hai)its and anatomical ])eculiarities. 



Tn the Old World, ornithology as a science dates, perhaps, from Aristotle, 

 .^84 years l)efore Christ. True, he was a teacher of A. P.. C's on the subject, but 

 he sets students to "thinking." I'.ul there were students before Aristotle; if not 

 students of .science, they were students of religion. It is to religion in many 

 forms that we owe the romance of ornithology. We may call this phase of the 

 subject "sui)erstition." The word itself is almost gruesome to the unlettered 

 iiuagination. It suggests uncanny things, gho-ts and goblins, and other creatures 

 that are sup])osed to wander around in the dark, because they were ne\er seen 

 at mid-day or any other time. Tn ihr educated person, actual faith in ghosts 

 and goblins has gi\en ])Iace to a mildly fanciful imagination which indulges in 

 the flavor of superstition, as one take>^ light desserts after :i full me.d. And 

 si> we have the roiuance of superstition for the intelligent. 



Sti)])ping ti) consider that the word \[«A\ uic.ins ;i "st:mding still" to "stare" 



1(..^ 



