over
facts about the commonest fowl that he will overlook. The study of
birds, therefore, offers a fascinating field for girls and women as
well as for their brothers.

What tools are needed for acquiring bird lore? To begin at the
beginning, let me ask: Who would expect to study the plants and flowers
without a botany? or the rocks and fossils and the general structure of
the earth without a reliable work on geology? or the planets and stars
without a treatise on astronomy? So, if you desire a knowledge of
ornithology, you will need what is known as a bird "key," or "manual,"
or "handbook"--that is, a scientific work that shows how the birds have
been classified, with accurate descriptions of all the families,
genera, species, subspecies, and varieties, together with the common
and scientific names of all the species and brief accounts of their
ranges and general habits. When you have found a plant or a flower
that is new to you, what is your first task? To "run it down" in a
botanical key. Just so, having found a feathered stranger, you should
note its markings, shape, size, etc., and then "run it down" with the
aid of a bird manual. It is much better to run a bird down in this way
than to shoot it down.

It is pertinent to say at this time that no one should disparage
scientific treatises, or the learned and painstaking people who gather
the material for them and prepare them. It is quite the fashion
nowadays, when a "popular" book on birds appears, for some reviewers to
compare it with the so-called "dry" scientific works of the
specialists, to the disparagement of the latter. This is as wrong as
it is gratuitous. The "popular" book, delightful as it may be, could
not have been written, or, if written, would have had little real
value, had it not been for the help obtained from the systematists,
who, with almost infinite toil, have made possible the scientific
classification of the numerous members of the bird tribe. Pioneer work
in ornithology, as elsewhere, may not be very enchanting to most
people, but it is necessary. The scientific spirit should be honored,
not disdained, for without it accuracy would be impossible. On the
other hand, the man who plods with scientific details should not look
with contempt upon the man who popularizes the results of technical
study by giving it an attractive literary setting. In short, the
scientific writer and the "popular" writer are alike worthy of
"honorable