RESIS ABOUT TS, 
CHAPTER I. 
THE PERCHING BIRDS. 
E find, on consulting Ridgway’s “ Manual of 
North American Birds,” that in this coun- 
try the birds have been grouped by ornithologists 
into seventeen orders, and these subdivided into 
sixty-eight genera. Each genus is made up of few 
or many species, and these, again, so very precise are 
the ornithological brethren, have been subspecied 
and sub-subspecied, until a suspicion arises that 
every man who has a cabinet of his own has rep- 
resented therein a variation from normal conditions 
unknown to the luck of any other collector. 
We do not propose to travel that far with the 
minutia champions. It will suffice for all our pur- 
poses to call a song-sparrow by that simple name, 
for the geographical variations are not so marked 
that confusion will arise, even if the reader has in 
his mind the sparrow of the Rocky Mountain dis- 
trict, that of the Delaware Valley, or the little chap 
that finds it in his heart to sing away off in the 
Aleutian Islands. 
The order, last in Ridgway’s proper and scientific 
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