CHAPTER XX. 
THE BIRDS. 
As this book is not written to instruct, it will 
not give ornithological information. There is 
here nothing new : my knowledge of birds is 
slight and empirical, and no doubt I missed 
much which would have been obvious to a skilled 
observer. But, loving birds dearly, having all 
my life looked at them, and having just come 
from one of the most remarkable bird districts 
of the world, I want to show what a vast amount 
of pleasure you can get out of birds without any 
deep scientific knowledge. You do not need 
Latin names, and you will find none here : you 
need not know technical terms : all that you 
require is a pair of glasses, a book of reference 
and love of your subject. Oddly enough a book 
of reference is hard to get. There is no book 
on the birds of Paraguay since one written by 
a Jesuit father in the eighteenth century. The 
best book to use is Argentine Ornithology , 
published in 1888 by Mr. W. H. Hudson in 
collaboration with that great ornithologist, the 
late Philip Lutley Sclater. But, unfortunately, 
