1874] The Study of Birds 



University of Iowa. Still another was Nellie Van de 

 Grift later Mrs. Sanchez sister of Mrs. Robert 

 Louis Stevenson, who as Fannie Van de Grift spent 

 her youth in Indianapolis. 



In connection with my work I interested several 

 of my students in the field study of birds. The tall warblfrs 

 trees of Maywood down the White River were the 

 favorite resort of the migrating warblers, and nearly 

 all the species which cross Indiana could be found 

 there. I know of no finer out-of-door study than 

 Ornithology. It has, however, the almost fatal 

 drawback that to secure any degree of thoroughness, 

 one must kill. Dealing with such highly developed 

 organisms is and ought to be painful. Somebody 

 has said that in shooting a wood thrush one feels 

 he has destroyed a "superior being." 



I never killed anything for the pleasure of it, and 

 since 1880 I have not even owned a gun, nor fired 

 a shot at any living creature; my last attempt was vertebrates 

 directed at a California burrowing owl, which got 

 away with its life. But from 1874 to 1876, in Wis- 

 consin and Indiana, I made large collections of 

 birds, and prepared a series of descriptions for my 

 first real contribution to science "A Manual of 

 Vertebrates of the Eastern United States," published 

 in 1876. This has gone through ten editions and is 

 still considerably used in schools of the region it 

 covers. It had been preceded, however, by a booklet 

 printed at Appleton, the joint work of Balfour Van 

 Vleck (an enthusiastic young naturalist in Lawrence 

 University) and myself an effort of which (as 

 Dr. Coues once observed) "the less said the better, 

 except that it paved the way to the excellent Manual 

 of Vertebrates." 



