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Bird- Lore 



^trti'Eore 



A Bi-monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL OKGAN (IH THK AUl^l'llON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 

 Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Vol. XI Published October 1. 1909 No. 5 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States, Canada and Mexico twenty cents 

 a number, one dollar a year, postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED, 190g, BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird -Lore's Motto : 

 A Bird in the Bush is IVorth Two in the Hand 



Having now figured in color the War- 

 blers, Thrushes, Flycatchers and Vireos of 

 North America, we shall present in the 

 next issue of Bird-Lose the first plate of 

 the much-requested series illustrating the 

 Sparrows. The drawings, by Fuertes, will 

 be reproduced by the most adequate process. 



Bird students should be grateful to the 

 American Ornithologists' Union's Com- 

 mittee on Classification and Nomenclature 

 for the comparatively few changes it pro- 

 poses to n>ake in the common names of 

 our birds in the forthcoming revised edi- 

 tion of the ' Check-List' of North American 

 birds. Where scientific names are con- 

 cerned, the committee has no choice but 

 to apply the accepted rules of zoological 

 nomenclature; but vernacular names know 

 no law, and the committee here was gov- 

 erned only by its own judgment. As will 

 be seen by the list, printed in our notice 

 of the July 'Auk,' in which the committee's 

 report appears, aside from minor altera- 

 tions affecting, for example, compound 

 names which are capitalized and hy- 

 phenated to conform to current custom, 

 most of the changes are distinct conces- 

 sions to popular usage, such book names 

 as 'Bartramian Sandpiper,' 'Leucos- 

 ticte,' 'Wilson's Thrush,' etc., giving 

 away respectively, to Ujiland Plover, 

 Rosy Finch and Veery. 



The committee's decision to omit the 

 word 'American,' and add 'European,' 

 where necessary, tends toward brcvitv, 



without loss of clearness. When we speak 

 of Robin or Crow, for instance, our native 

 species are, of course, as much understood 

 as the use of the same names in England 

 implies that the European species are 

 referred to. On the other hand, it is 

 clearly as proper for us to use the word 

 ■ European ' as it would be for the English- 

 man to employ 'American' under similar 

 circumstances. 



It is curious to what lengths the special- 

 ist will go in the effort to show that his 

 particular branch of science is the only 

 one through which we may hope to reach 

 the end in view. Here we have an animal 

 psychologist, who, writing in McClure's 

 magazine for August, assures us that the 

 day of the study of animal life in nature 

 is past. It is true, he is good enough to 

 acknowledge that the "naturalist of the 

 older sort did indeed secure much valuable 

 information, — but it took him a lifetime 

 to do it. He went out into fields or woods 

 for the chance of running across some 

 interesting creature; and, even when luck 

 favored him most, he had to wait patiently 

 hour after hour for the chance of seeing 

 something new or significant." 



Our writer, and his kind, however, have 

 changed all that. They will waste no 

 time in learning the relations of an animal 

 to its natural surroundings and its actions 

 in them; on the contrary, to quote again, 

 "he brings the animal into his laboratory, 

 and arranges matters to suit his conveni- 

 ence, not its." Here, no doubt, he will 

 ascertain certain facts which the field 

 observer would never ascertain, but to 

 assert, for this reason, that the latter's 

 days "are past," is an example of that 

 narrowness of vision of which scientists 

 are unfortunately too often justly acccused. 

 We commend to the writer of the article in 

 question Doctor Watson's 'Studies of 

 Terns in the Tortugas,' as a contribution 

 to our knowledge of animal behavior by 

 a psychologist, who, although an acknow- 

 ledged leader in laboratory research, is 

 still far too good a naturalist to be blind 

 to the importance of studying an animal 

 in its own environment. 



