THE BIRDS ABOUT US. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PERCHING BIRDS. 



WE find, on consulting Ridgway's "Manual of 

 North American Birds," that in this coun- 

 try the birds have been grouped by ornithologists 

 into seventeen orders, and these subdivided into 

 sixty-eight genera. Each genus is made up of few 

 or many species, and these, again, so very precise are 

 the ornithological brethren, have been subspecied 

 and sub-subspecied, until a suspicion arises that 

 every man who has a cabinet of his own has rep- 

 resented therein a variation from normal conditions 

 unknown to the luck of any other collector. 



We do not propose to travel that far with the 

 minutiae champions. It will suffice for all our pur- 

 poses to call a song-sparrow by that simple name, 

 for the geographical variations are not so marked 

 that confusion will arise, even if the reader has in 

 his mind the sparrow of the Rocky Mountain dis- 

 trict, that of the Delaware Valley, or the little chap 

 that finds it in his heart to sing away off in the 

 Aleutian Islands. 



The order, last in Ridgway's proper and scientific 



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