BRANCH CHORD AT A; CLASS AYES: THE BIRDS 359 



will interest us in some of the other fly-catchers; from the 

 familiar chipping sparrow and tree-sparrow we shall be 

 led to look for their cousins the swamp-sparrows and 

 song-sparrows, and the larger grosbeaks and cross-bills, 

 and so on through the order. 



Determining and studying the birds of a locality. 

 To identify the various species of birds in the locality of 

 the school it uill be necessary to have some book giving 

 the descriptions of all or most of the species of the region, 

 with tables and keys for tracing out the different forms. 

 Such manuals or keys are numerous now ; the study of 

 birds is one of the most popular lines of nature study, and 

 a host of bird books has been published in the last few 

 years. The best general manual is Coues's " Key to the 

 Birds of North America," which includes not only keys 

 for tracing and descriptions of all the known species of 

 birds on this continent, but also accounts of the distribu- 

 tion, of the nesting and eggs, and of the plumage of the 

 young birds, besides a thorough introduction to the 

 anatomy and physiology of birds, and directions for col- 

 lecting and preserving them. Jordan's "Manual of 

 Vertebrates " gives keys and short descriptions of the 

 birds found east of the Missouri River; Chapman's 

 " Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America " is 

 excellent. To be able to use these manuals it is neces- 

 sary to have the bird's body in hand; and that means 

 usually death for the bird. Recently there have been 

 published several bird-keys which attempt to make it 

 possible to determine species, the commoner ones at any 

 rate, without such close examination. The birds in these 

 books are usually grouped wholly artificially (without any 

 reference to their natural relationships) according to such 

 salient characteristics as color, markings, size, habit of 

 perching, or running, or flying, etc. Tliese characteris- 

 tics are such as can presumably be made out in the living 



