TO THE READER. 



Do you want to know the birds and call them by their 

 familiar names ? You may do so if you will, provided you 

 have keen eyes and a pocket full of patience; patience is 

 the salt of the bird-catching legend. 



The flowers silently await your coming, from the wayside 

 wild rose to the shy orchid entrenched in the depths of the 

 cool bog, and you may examine and study them at your 

 leisure. With the birds it is often only a luring call, a 

 scrap of melody, and they are gone. Yet in spite of this 

 you may have a bowing and even a speaking acquaintance 

 with them. 



The way is plain for those who wish to study the science 

 of ornithology and have time to devote to the pursuit ; its 

 literature is exhaustive, and no country offers a more inter- 

 esting variety of species than our own. But for the novice, 

 who wishes to identify easily the birds that surround him, 

 to recognize their songs and give them their English names, 

 the work at first seems difficult. There are many scien- 

 tific terms, containing their own definitions, that lose force 

 and exactness when translated into simpler language, requir- 

 ing a dozen words to give the meaning of one. There is a 

 comforting fact, however, for the novice, that while scientific 

 nomenclature has been and is constantly changing, the com- 

 mon names, that science also recognizes, remain practically 

 unchanged. Our Bluebird bears the same name as in Audu- 

 bon's day, and the Meadowlark, who has been moved from 

 one genus to another, is called the Meadowlark still. 



xiii 



