C. William Beebe Bird Its Form and Function

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Far too many students of birds follow some such mode of procedure as this: When a new bird is found, it is shot, labelled, preserved in a collection and forgotten; or, if studying the bird with a glass, all effort is centred in finding some characteristic by which it can be named, and, succeeding in this, search is at once made for still another species, whose name can in turn be added to a list. Observing the habits, the courtship and nest-building, and memorizing the song, is a third phase of bird-study the best of all three methods; but few indeed have ever given a moment's thought to the bird itself.