244 Educational Review [ March 
natural tendency to build on? One has only to talk to 
young people about their feathered neighbors to discover 
that they have a keen desire for information about them. 
So keen a desire that, lacking information, they often set 
about the task of self-education. Too often, I regret to say, 
this leads them to exhibit an undue fondness for bird-nesting, 
in which they display a greater zeal than in any other occupa- 
tion of boyhood, outside of games in competition with their 
fellows. But with everyone, boys and girls of all ages, this 
inborn liking for birds is shown in the general fondness for 
cage-birds. While this is very humble evidence, still if we 
pause a moment and think of the hundreds of thousands of 
people who care enough for birds to give a caged pet daily 
attention, and who find pleasure in its song and companion- 
ship, we shall not fail to be impressed by the universality of 
this love of birds. 
While almost wholly unencouraged, this innate tendency 
might be expected to show in some degree the increase in 
intellectuality and demand for knowledge which mark the 
day, and we see that there has arisen an independent class of 
bird-students, composed of people who are earnestly trying 
to become acquainted with our birds. Within the past six 
years, to my personal knowledge, they have purchased, from 
New York and Boston publishers alone, 70,000 text-books 
on ornithology. These books are not nature essays, but are 
designed to assist students in identifying birds, and their sale 
“ indicates a corresponding demand on the part of the public 
\ for information on the subject of which they treat. 
Now let me ask what attention do our educators give to 
the development of this inborn desire for a knowledge of the 
forms of life which live about us? Do they appreciate its 
significance? Do they even realize its existence? We have 
biological and zodlogical text-books with lessons in compara- 
tive anatomy and systematic relationships, admirable for 
those who have sufficient interest in natural history to mas- 
ter the technicalities that beset its study, but utterly unsuited 
to that infinitely greater class which, to paraphrase an epi- 
gram, loves birds and hates ornithology. 
