CHAPTER VI 



CONCERNING SWIFTS 



BIRDS have become the music-makers of 

 Nature ; but this (no sudden acquirement, 

 for their relations the batrachians are vocal) is not 

 a vital characteristic, nor that which most dis- 

 tinguishes our feathered friends. The bird is, 

 before aught else, a flying animal ; and this fact 

 properly induced the earlier naturalists to place 

 first in their classification the best fliers, the birds 

 of prey. Later investigators have placed the 

 singers, the thrushes, in the premier position. But 

 the great men of guns, knives, wires, and glass 

 eyes, frantic to differentiate minutely the most 

 trivial variations of form, and to demonstrate with 

 the accuracy of a shore-line the limitations of the 

 range of victims, omitted, even for generations, to 



