HOW THE BIRDS KNOW 345 



The question of exactly how much the birds 

 know is a vast one freighted with scientific im- 

 portance. It should be handled stripped of all 

 sentiment and devoid of all illusion, based wholly 

 on what the birds prove they know by what they 

 customarily do in given circumstances. It is 

 time to repudiate what scientists who went gun- 

 ning for specimens to articulate and study for the 

 classification of species have written of bird men- 

 tality. They shot every specimen they siaw before 

 they knew its species, not to mention its charac- 

 teristics. In the question of the scarcity of birds 

 and the consequent scarcity of fruit, the work of 

 the would-be scientist must be taken into consid- 

 eration. When I read of the man who shot fifty 

 rose-breasted grosbeaks, one hundred and fifty-two 

 cedar waxwings, or fifty warblers to see what their 

 crops contained, I grow indignant. Ten would fur- 

 nish sufficient proof in each case and save the lives 

 of two hundred and forty birds. This kind of work 

 should be prohibited immediately and forever. 

 It is wholly unnecessary to kill such numbers of 

 birds as have been sacrificed for years. It is time 

 to repudiate what romanticists and the fakers of 

 city flats have been presenting to us as bird history ; 

 they have no personal acquaintance with the birds 

 nor experience in the woods. It is time to refuse to 

 tolerate natural history written and illustrated in 

 parks and zoological gardens. Natural history is 

 the history of nature, and nothing in all God's 



