A Bird’s-Eye View 
group, found largely upon the surface of the 
earth, where they commonly nest, and having 
a flight that is short and low—a group compris- 
ing many of the game birds, such as pheasants, 
and quail or ‘‘bob-white,’’ the domestic 
fowls, etc. Ill-defined as are the boundaries of 
these groups, indeed, with perhaps no bound- 
ary at all, a bird’s-eye view makes clearly evi- 
dent the distinction on which this method of 
arrangement is based. 
The affiliations of all in these three groups— 
comprising two-thirds of all our birds in North 
America—are distinctly with the land; and 
yet among them are not a few premonitions of 
the remaining third, the water fowl. Contrary 
to the usual laws of optics, some objects become 
more distinct as we recede from them; and 
this is true of the boundary-line of land and 
water birds. Each class invades the territory 
of the other. King-fishers and water-wagtails 
are scarcely less addicted to the ponds and shal- 
lows than sandpipers. Woodcock and snipe 
seem only like the presentiment of water fowl, 
herons have many of the habits of crows, and 
the upland plover is not far from the kingdom 
of ‘‘perchers.’’ Probably Nature had no thought 
of a fixed gulf between these two great divisions. 
77 
