6 INTRODUCTION 



themselves, and counts a bird in the bush worth two in 

 the hand. Such a person, if he is intelligent, makes good 

 use of the best works on ornithology; he would not know 

 how to get along without them ; but he studies most the 

 birds themselves, and after awhile he begins to associate 

 them on a plan of his own. Not that he mistrusts the 

 approximate correctness of the received classification, or 

 ceases to find it of daily service ; but though it were as 

 accurate as the multiplication table, it is based (and 

 rightly, no doubt) on anatomical structure alone; it rates 

 birds as bodies, and nothing else; while to the person of 

 whom we are speaking, birds are, first of all, souls; his 

 interest in them is, as we say, personal ; and we are 

 none of us in the habit of grouping our friends according 

 to height, or complexion, or any other physical pecu- 

 liarity." 



The bright plumage and sweet, cheery song of the bird 

 fills every heart with pleasure, unuttered, perhaps, or 

 expressed in such words as Bryant's " To a Waterfowl:" 



Whither, 'midst falling dew, 



While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 

 Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 



Thy solitary way? 



Vainly the fowler's eye 



Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 

 As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 



Thy figure floats along. 



Seek 'st thou the plashy brink 



Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 

 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 



On the chafed ocean side ? 



There is a Power whose care 

 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 



The desert and illimitable air, 

 Lone wandering, but not lost. 



