JUN 5 1900 
BIOLOGY OF OUR COMMON BIRDS. 
By C. F. HODGE, Pb. D., Clark University. 
Cedar bird and nest. 
Before genius is manliness and before beauty is power. 
— Burroughs , Birds and Poets , p. /yj. 
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: 
Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
— Keats, Endymion. 
Great human values, of power, of thought, 
of beauty, attach to a knowledge of our birds ; 
and the larger science, biology, takes them 
all into account. In elementary and popular 
education, 1 "especially, this wider science should 
form the solid foundations for all our relations to bird life. 
The important question is: What 
do birds do in the world? In striving to 
answer this question we should also con¬ 
sider what we can do for our birds to 
render their work as complete and effect- Aud ^® n too U think of this ’ remem - 
ive as possible. We must first gain by ’ Tls morning somewhere, and 
observation and personal acquaintance The awakening continents, from shore 
with the living birds of each species a Some ™ v h e e r ^J^ birds are singiug 
knowledge of their ways of doing things, . 
their foods, their beauties and their The summ ^, r c . ame - aud a11 the birds 
songs. Then give the imagination full The hot coals; the 
play to picture vividly before US what Wask ^ ned hashes; in the orchards 
the whole species is doing in every farm xim'cui t^ '^mi <^rden r< beds 
and garden and about every home in the Host \nV\omi d * ” s insects crawled ' 
land. Think Of the millions Of beautiful No foe to check their march, till they 
had made 
wings and building nests and eating bills The la “ d d a e desert > without leaf or 
and singing throats. Aside from their —Longfellow, Birds of Killing-worth. 
Think, every morning when the sun 
peeps through 
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the 
grove, 
How jubilant the happy birds renew 
Their old, melodious madrigals of 
love ! 
