Interpretations 



life in his hand as well as his manuscript when 

 he sallies forth to the publisher. Common 

 sense commends this, if the law of the land 

 does not ; but editors should be held to certain 

 responsibilities, such as seeking the truth and 

 detecting error. Should be, but alas ! they are 

 forever giving aid and comfort to ignorance. 

 Newspaper ornithology is all too apt to be irre- 

 trievably bad and a good deal of literary orni- 

 thology is open to criticism. Writers speak 

 t^o confidently of the characteristics of one 

 month, ignoring the conditions of the month 

 before it. Eobins, blue-birds and song-spar- 

 rows, as familiar instances, figure quite incor- 

 rectly as so-called signs of spring. Theirs now 

 are richer songs than in January; every note 

 rounded and full, freighted to bursting with 

 the joys that possess them, but the singers of 

 this April day were neither absent nor mute in 

 mid-winter. Declining to wade through snow- 

 drifts or face the frosty wind to hear the mid- 

 winter minstrelsy, it is set down in books and 

 announced in newspapers that the fields are 

 then forsaken by the choristers of spring. 



Certain stereotyped statements concerning 

 birds appear in village weeklies and are taken 



149 



