I Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. publish in 

 "Bird-Life." b.v Frank M. Chapman, a 



\h J-:'^--'1 1 '- — v4-u.j.i-_ 1 -J.' j-^..j 



ing: the present slips from us with growing 

 '[rapidity, but the birds are erer with us. 

 jThe robin singing so cheerily outside my 

 [iwindow sings not for himself alone, but for 

 hundreds of robins I have known at other 

 , times and places. His song recalls a March 

 levening, warm with the promise of spring; 

 'May mornings, when all the world seemed 

 Ito r'ing with the voice of birds; June days, 

 When cherries were ripening; the winter 

 sunlit forests of Florida, and even the 

 snow-capped summit of glorious Popocate- 

 petl. And so it is with other birds. We 

 may, it is true, have known them for years, 

 but they have not changed, and their 

 familiar notes and appearance encourage 

 ithe pleasant self-delusion that we, too, are 

 Ithe same. The slender saplings of earlier 

 years now give wide-spreading shade, the 

 scrubby pasture lot has become a dense 

 woodland, boyhood's friends are boys no 

 longer, and, worst of all, there has appeared 

 another generation of boys, whose presence 

 is discouraging proof that for us youth has 

 passed. Then some May morning we hear 

 the woodthrush sing. Has he, too, changed? 

 Not one note, and as his silvery voice rings 

 through the woods we are young again. A 

 hundred incidents of the long ago come to 

 vs real as those of yesterday. And here 

 we have the secret of youth in age, which 

 every venerable naturalist I have ever met 

 convincingly illustrated. I could name 

 nearly a dozen, living and dead, whom it 

 has been my valued privilege to know. All 

 had passed the allotted threescore and ten, 

 and some were over fourscore. The friends 

 and associates of their earlier days had 

 passed away, and one might imagine that 

 they had no interest in life, and were simply 

 waiting for the end. But these veterans 

 were old in years only. Their hearts were 

 young. The earth was fair, plants still 

 bloomed, and birds sang for them. There 

 was no idle waiting here; the days were all 

 too short. With what boyish ardor they 

 told of some recent discovery; what inspira- 

 tion there was in their enthusiasm! So I 

 say to .you, if you would reap the purest 

 pleasures of youth, manhood and old age, 

 go to the birds, and through them be brought 

 within the ennobling influences of Nature." 

 There is more than ornithology, of which he 

 is an authority, in the writing of Mr. Chap- 

 man, and more than illustration in the draw- 

 ings of Mr. Thompson — there is literature 

 and there is art in this delightful book of 

 "Bird-Life." 



