_With Illustrations_
_By E. Boyd Smith_
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1903
_Published October, 1903._
_There are many books written nowadays which will tell you about birds
as folk of the twentieth century see them. They describe carefully the
singer's house, his habits, the number of his little wife's eggs, and
the color of every tiny feather on her pretty wings. But these books
tell you nothing at all about bird-history; about what birds have meant
to all the generations of men, women, and children since the world
began. You would think, to read the words of the bird-book men, that
they were the very first folk to see any bird, and that what they think
they have seen is the only matter worth the knowing._
_Now the interesting facts about birds we have always with us. We can
find them out for ourselves, which is a very pleasant thing to do, or we
can take the word of others, of which there is no lack. But it is the
quaint fancies about birds which are in danger of being lost. The
long-time fancies which the world's children in all lands have been
taught are quite as important as the every-day facts. They show what the
little feathered brothers have been to the children of men; how we have
come to like some and to dislike others as we do; why the poets have
called them by certain nicknames which we ought to know; and why a great
many strange things are so, in the minds of childlike people._
_Facts are not what one looks for in a Curious Book. Yet it may be that
some facts have crept in among the ancient fancies of this volume, just
as bookworms will crawl into the nicest books; but they do not belong
there, and it is for these that the Book apologizes to the children. It
has no apology to offer those grown folks who insist that facts, never
fancies, are what children need._