X INTRODUCTION 



characters can normally be studied better in the field than 

 in a museum — or at least, when, although both types of study 

 are necessary, the field study is the more important; and 

 when intensive study in the field, as carried on at this sta- 

 tion, yields more important results than can normally be 

 achieved by the roaming collector. 



In addition, it must always be remembered that the 

 really first class naturalist whose observations are to bear 

 most fruit, must possess the gift of vividly truthful por- 

 trayal of what he has possessed, the vision clearly to see in 

 its real essentials. The best scientific books, from Darwin 

 and Wallace to Bates and Waterton and Audubon, are 

 those which possess such vision and are so interesting to 

 intelligent laymen that they are often to be found in the 

 libraries of cultivated people who are not professed scien- 

 tists. Mr. Beebe has the wide horizon of interest, and the 

 happj^ art of expression, which entitle him to go in this 

 class. 



This gift of expression is of value because it is based 

 on a really phenomenal gift of both wide and minutely in- 

 tensive observation. The fundamental differences between 

 the quality of his study and the quality of the study of the 

 average closet museum worker can be illustrated by his ob- 

 servation of those queer South American game birds, the 

 tinamous. 



Closet naturalists have long known that some of the 

 tinamou had rough, and some smooth, tarsi. This fact 

 awakened no curiosity in their minds, no desire to find out 

 whether it was correlated with any difference in habits or 

 life history. They simply treated it as justifying a termin- 

 ological decision as to whether it marked a genus or a sub- 

 genus; and examined the tarsus of each specimen with only 

 sufficient care to enable them to decide the specimen-drawer 

 into which it should be thrown. 



Beebe was a different kind of observer, and he was 

 working in tlie birds' haunts, in Demerara. The small tina- 



