PREFACE 
WE find to-day some thirteen or fourteen thousand 
different forms, or species, of birds upon the earth. For 
many years ornithologists have laboured to name, and to 
arrange in some rational order, these multitudinous forms 
of bird life. Some such arrangement is, of course, a neces- 
sitvy—without a handle we should indeed be handicapped 
in studying a bird; but let us not forget that classification 
is but a means to an end. 
Far too many students of birds follow some such mode 
of procedure as this: When a new bird is found, it is shot, 
labelled, preserved in a collection and forgotten; or, if 
studying the bird with a glass, all effort is centred in 
finding some characteristic by which it can be named, 
and, succeeding in this, search is at once made for still 
another species, whose name can in turn be added to a list. 
Observing the habits, the courtship and_nest-building, 
and memorizing the song, is a third phase of bird-study— 
the best of all three methods; but few indeed have ever 
given a moment’s thought to the bird isel/. 
I have lectured to an audience of teachers, every one 
of whom was able to identify fifty birds or more, but not 
one among them knew the significance of the scales on 
Vil 
