CHAPTER I. 



A Word to Beginners and Teachers. 



A WORD to beginners, and also especially to 

 teachers in our schools, as to the kind of inter- 

 est in birds which should be primarily aroused 

 and cultivated. 



I once heard a high school graduate read an 

 essay upon Browning's " How They Brought 

 the Good News from Ghent to Aix," in which 

 that splendid, living and moving poem, after 

 being killed, was minutely dissected. The es- 

 sayist knew just where Ghent and Aix were and 

 just the length of the ride ; but of consciousness 

 of the beauty in the human struggle so strongly 

 set forth, and of enthusiasm for it, there was 

 not a trace. Such interest in birds and flowers 

 we may awaken in others and be led into our- 

 selves, when, with the eagerness of a collector 

 of stamps or coins, it gets to be a morbid passion 



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