covery ; or while dri\-ing his cow 

 to pasture, hear a new song or 

 make a new observation. Secrets 

 lurk on all sides. There is news 

 in every bush. What no man 

 ever saw before may the next 

 moment be revealed to you. 

 What a new interest the woods 

 have ! How you long to explore 

 every nook and corner of them !" 



The scientific results to be de- 

 rived from the study of birds 

 are fully realized by the natural- 

 ist. But there are other results 

 equally important. I would have 

 every one know of them : results ^ 

 that add to our pleasure in field 

 and wood, and give fresh interest 

 to walks that before were event- 

 less ; that quicken both ear and 

 eye, making us hear and see 

 where before we were deaf and 

 blind. Then, to our surprise, we 

 shall discover that the forests 

 and pastures we have known all 

 our lives are tenanted by count- 

 less feathered inhabitants, whose 

 companionship will prove a 

 source of endless enjoyment. 



I would enter a special plea 

 for the study of birds in the 

 schools ; for the more general in- 

 troduction of ornithology in nat- 

 ural-history courses. Frogs and 

 crayfish serve an excellent pur- 

 pose, but we may not encounter 

 either of them after leaving the 

 laboratory ; whereas birds not 

 only offer excellent opportunities 

 for study, but are always about 

 us, and even a slight familiarity 

 with them will be of value lon_ 

 school days are over. 



THE bird's PLACi; IN NATURF,* 



.\bout thirteen thousand species of 

 birds are known to science. The struc- 

 ture of many of these has been carefully 

 studied, and all have been classified, at 

 least provisionally. Taken as a whole, 

 the class Aves, in which all birds are 



A 



Photo by Dwight Franklin 

 KINGFISHER LEAVING ITS NEST 



The shores of wooded streams or ponds are the 

 chosen haunts of the kingfisher. Silently he perches 

 on some limli overhanging" the water, ever on the alert 

 for food or foe. Paddle toward him as quiet!)' as you 

 please, just as you reach his danger line he drops from 

 his perch and with loud, rattling call flies on ahead. 

 This may Ijc repeated several times, until finally the 

 limits of his wanderings are reached, when he makes 

 a wide detour and returns to the starting" point. 



after 



*0n the structure of birds read Coues's 

 Key to North American Birds, part II (Estes 

 & tauriat) ; Headley, The Structure and Life 

 of Birds; Newton's Dictionary of Birds. 

 Articles : Anatomy of Birds and Fossil Birds ; 

 Martin and Moale's Handbook of Vertebrate 

 Dissection, part 11; How to Dissect a Bird. 



placed, is more clearly defined than any 

 other group of the higher animals — that 

 is, the most unlike birds are more closely 

 allied than are the extremes among mam- 

 mals, fishes, or reptiles, and all living 

 birds possess the distinctive characters of 

 their class. 



When compared with other animals, 

 birds are found to occupy second place 

 in the scale of life. They stand between 

 mammals and reptiles, and are more 

 closely related to the latter than to the 

 former ; in fact, certain extinct birds so 

 clearly connect living birds with reptiles 

 that these two classes are sometimes 

 placed in one group — the Sauropsida. 



The characters that distinguish birds 



701 



