124 THE NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



5. Food : — Fruit, seeds ; insects, mice, fish, other birds ; 

 how the food is obtained. This is an economically important 

 topic. Some insect-eaters will take tent-caterpillars, for 

 example, but will not touch cut-worms. Discovering what 

 insects any particular bird will eat is good practice in both 

 bird and insect study. Encourage children to feed birds in 

 severe weather. 



6. Relation of Birds to Man : — Checking insects and weeds ; 

 scavenging; value for plumage, for song, for food as flesh 

 and eggs. 



7. Different kinds of Birds : — Distinctions based on ex- 

 ternals, as bills, feet, wings, size, colors ; based on habits of 

 life and adaptations, as divers, swimmers, waders, shore- 

 haunters, scratchers, birds of prey, perchers, etc. 



8. Description of Externals: — Size, color, markings and 

 peculiarities, shape of bill, feet, body, wing, tail, flight; 

 technical terms are applied to the different regions of the 

 bird's body and the feathers are correspondingly named. 



Insects. — In individuals and species insects outnumber 

 every other subdivision of the animal kingdom. They inhabit 

 all climes and live in all kinds of situations — in air, on the 

 earth and in the water. As flyers, crawlers and swimmers, 

 they mark the highest degree of animal evolution. They 

 include the most beautiful objects in creation, and exhibit the 

 most remarkable adaptations to modes of life. Some of these 

 specks of animation so skilfully adapt means to ends that one 

 hardly knows whether to ascribe their actions to instinct 

 or intelligence. Mankind is indebted to them directly for 

 important articles of food and clothing, for drugs and dyestuffs, 

 and indirectly for his most beautiful flowers, delicious fruits 

 and seeds, for his clover and other important crops ; per 

 contra, he must charge them with incalculable destruction 



