FRANK B. COOMBS. 155 



Birds, from their free flight in the pathless air, and their 

 mysterious coming and vanishing, have always appealed to 

 the reverent side of the human mind, and have symbolized 

 beauty, love and the peaceful virtues, enjoying a full share 

 of mention in prose and poem. In ancient travelers' tales 

 are the beginnings of natural history. But amidst much 

 that was truly seen and told was many a fanciful supersti- 

 tion — stories of the Phoenix, dying consumed by celestial 

 fire, its single progeny rising from the parent ashes ; of the 

 Geese that grew from barnacles, and of the Swallow, said 

 to bury itself in the mud at the approach of winter, coming 

 forth unharmed into the spring sunshine. As men traveled 

 more and the means of comparing observations upon our 

 running, swimming and flying world-mates grew readier, these 

 fables perished one after another, and there came a wish to 

 know the truth about them. The addition of facts led in 

 time to their separation into special classes of facts, these 

 sets being slowly subdivided into the many mutually de- 

 pendent specialized departments of our own day. So Orni- 

 thology, the study of birds in general, may be approached 

 from many points. The scientific classifier busies himself 

 in making clear the affinities of groups of birds which have 

 essential characters in common, with other such groups 

 whose distinctive characters are different, and for this pur- 

 pose he asks the aid of those who have had opportunity to 

 study the ways and habits of birds of many regions. He is 

 helped furthermore by the comparative anatomist, who 

 knows their hidden similarities of structure ; and calls upon 

 the paleontologist for the testimony of fossil types, long 

 extinct, which fill gaps which would otherwise lie between 

 now very widely varying groups. 



The economist, too, is occupied in studying the value of 

 bird-life to mankind, either as food or in its benefits to agri- 

 culture, determining as far as possible in what manner the 

 usefulness of birds to man maybe increased, their harm con- 

 trolled when it occurs, and valuable species protected and 



