THE NIDIOLOGIST 



159 



Birdcraft. A Field Book of Tzvo Hiindred Song, 

 Game, and Water Birds. By Mabel Osgood Wright, 

 with full-page plates, containing one hundred and 

 twenty-eight birds in the natural colors and other illus- 

 trations; pp. i-xvi, 1-317. Macmillan & Co., New 

 York and London, 1895. $3. 



In this volume we have a very dainty little con- 

 tribution to the bird lore of this country, coming 

 as it does to us in an attractive binding, and under a 

 name that almost at once carries our minds afield and 

 brings up before us a hundred or more personal recol- 

 lections of the various haunts of birds in marsh, 

 meadow land, or forest. Birdcraft makes no preten- 

 sion to being a book for the use of the professional 

 Ornithologist, or even for the one already familiar 

 with the Latin and English names of our United States 

 birds. Much less is it intended for the collector of 

 birds, their nests, and their eggs, but on the other 

 hand it has been distinctly written with the view of 

 furnishing aid to the novice in Ornithology — to assist 

 him " to identify easily the birds that surround him, 

 tf) recognize their songs, and give them their English 

 names." 



Our authoress has but three requirements to sug- 

 gest in order to be successful in this, and these are a 

 "a keen eye, a quick ear, and loving patience;" and 

 we are told that the " gun that silences the bird voice, 

 and the looting of nests, should be left to the practiced 

 hand of science." Nevertheless the Ornithological 

 collections of our larger museums and also the read- 

 ing of authoritative works upon American Ornithology 

 are both proposed as efficient adjuncts to the three 

 essentials just mentioned. 



Following a word "To the reader" we have four " in- 

 troductory chapters" devoted to "The Spring Song," 

 "The Buildingof the Nest," "The Water Birds, "and the 

 "Birds of Autumn and Winter." These various sub- 

 jects, studied as it were through the eye and the 

 cultivated ear of a poet, rather than through the tech- 

 nically attuned sense organs of an Ornithologist, are 

 treated in a manner most charming, in some instances 

 even forcibly' reminding one of the remarkable 

 renderings of a similar nature by Michelet in his 

 famous work L'Oiseaii. 



Instructions as to " How to Name the Birds " are set 

 forth in less than half a dozen pages — rather scant 

 handling, where the opera glass is to be substituted 

 for the collecting gun, and. two hundred birds, selected 

 , from the United States avifauna of nearly two thou- 

 sand species and subspecies, constitute the material 

 to be worked upon. Indeed, will our novice require 

 "a pocketful of patience " in the prem.ises, and may 

 very soon come to feel the force of the words of the 

 writer of Birdcraft, and vividly realize that "the 

 bird quest [is] a recreation, and not a mental disci- 

 pline, being a bridge where those who can go no 

 farther may rest and enjoy intelligently the beauty 

 and music of the bird world " (p. 39). 



About ten pages are given to a somewhat ingenious 

 and eminenth^ popular " Synopsis of Bird Families," 

 with page references to the body of the work further 

 on, where under " Bird Biographies " the individual 

 species noticed are treated in an equally popular 

 manner. Lastly, at the close_ of the volume, just be- 



fore we come to the two excellent indexes of English 

 and Latin names, we have a " Key to the Birds," the 

 descriptions being only " of the male bird in spring 

 plumage, except in the case of those birds that we see 

 only in winter." 



Birdcraft can boast of fiftesn plates, the majority 

 of which are colored, and each plate presents us with 

 from a dozen to a dozen and a half figures. "The 

 birds contained in these plates have been adapted and 

 grouped from Audubon's Birds of America, Dr. 

 Warren's Birds of Pennsylvania, De Kav's Ornithology 

 of the State of Ne-cV York," and from Mr. J. L. Ridg- 

 way's illustrations to Dr. A. K. Fisher's Hazvks and 

 Oivls of the United States. Upon the whole these 

 figures are rather cleverly done, and constitute one of 

 the most attractive features of the work. Especially 

 may this be said of a number of those reduced and 

 adapted from Audubon, and where his great work 

 was available it is hard to see why in some cases, 

 more particularly among the water birds, the highly 

 stiffish and unlifelike figures of De Kay were made to 

 replace them. Unfortunately, in not a few instances 

 the coloring is very faulty, as, for example, where the 

 Nighthawk, the Bank Swallow, the Chimney Swift. 

 and the Whip-poor-will have all been uniformly tinted 

 alike — a warm earth-brown, unnatural in the case of 

 any one of them. 



Birdcraft probably represents the best of a certain 

 class of Ornithological literature which is considered 

 to be quite the thing to print nowadaj's. I bv no 

 means altogether approve of it, for the main reason 

 that I do not believe in the encouragement of super- 

 ficiality in any form. Superficiality and inaccuracy 

 march hand in hand, and neither of them are by any 

 means strangers to the pages and plates of Birdcraft, 

 and no amount of poetic varnish, however skillfully 

 it may be used in dealing with bird life — histories of 

 our birds — can atone for the sin of either. Take, for 

 one example out of many, the references to the 

 Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and we are told " its song 

 is suffused with color like a luscious tropic fruit 

 rendered into sound " (p. 163), while the bird is de- 

 scribed as having a "heavy brown bill" (p. 2S4). 

 Now one of the peculiarities of the thick bill of the 

 Rose-breasted Grosbeak is that it is ivhite, as any 

 Ornithologist who has ever collected the species will 

 vouch for. Whatever we attempt in this country to 

 increase the interest taken in the study of our birds and 

 their protection, let us above all things place the exact 

 facts of the science befoie the coming generation of 

 Ornithologists. It is a dangerous thing to progress 

 to first deny the "novice" a collecting gun, and, 

 armed only with an opera glass 'and notebook, he 

 has handed him as his guide a volume pregnant with 

 inaccuracies and overflowing with a class of state- 

 ments useless alike in the field and in the study. 



Still, aside from all this, Birdcraft ]s not altogether 

 lacking in good points, for some of the "biographies" 

 are very entertaining, and many of the colored reduc- 

 tions seen in the figures of the plates are very pretty, 

 and, if one has the true instincts of an Ornithologist 

 at heart, the work is written in a style so fascinating 

 that it will soon drive such a one to the museums 

 containing our Ornithological collections ; to the 

 standard "keys," " handbooks," and "manuals" of 

 Ornithology which have been published ; to the works 

 of Audubon, Wilson, Baird, and a host of their kind; to 

 the haunts of nature; and, finally, to the gun store. I 

 believe it capable of accomplishing much along such 

 lines ; indeed, I believe it to be one of its best uses; 

 and, in such a useful career, the present reviewer 

 wishes it the full measure of success. 



R. W. Shufeldt. 



