=Chapters on the Natural History of the United States.= By Dr. R. W.
Shufeldt. Studer Brothers, Publishers, 114 Fifth avenue, New York.
The man who is able to go out into the fields and see things is
a good man to know. Whether he has the gift of telling well what
he sees or not, we are glad to be with him, for he is full of the
things we desire much to know, and we can get them out of him. If
he is a rare story-teller, with marked powers of description,
so much the better. But if he combines these elements with the
practice of an expert photographer and uses all his arts to get
the secrets of nature down exactly as they appear, he is a prince
of good fellows to all who worship at the shrine of nature.
Dr. Shufeldt has done all this, and his enterprising publishers
have brought out the matter in a large octavo volume of about four
hundred pages, solidly bound, with gilt tops. The price is only
$3.50, net, and any lover of nature having the half tones he
gives would not part with them for ten times the cost of the book.
Catching good negatives of live birds in the open is not easy. One
needs to know photography and bird habits extremely well, and then
be satisfied with a thousand failures along with a few successes.
This knowledge and patience have been remarkably displayed by the
author in the profusion of full-page reproductions of his valuable
work.
The meadow lark's nest containing young birds is a most artistic
plate. The tree toads clinging to their tree and the mother spider
caught in the act of carrying her young in a silken ball are
deserving of special commendation. His pair of cedar birds look
particularly happy as they balance upon their twigs and eye the
camera as if they knew all about it.
Horned toads and whales, dragon flies and opossums, as well as
many other forms of life, both common and rare, have their turn at
entertaining the reader, and their inmost thoughts seem to have
been read by this enthusiastic and peculiarly successful scientist.
It is a good book for children of all ages, but wherever it is
introduced into any family the younger children will uniformly
have to wait till their elders have enjoyed it, for no age can be
proof against its charms.
=Birds of North America.= Illustrated Descriptive Manual to Beard's
Natural History Charts. Potter & Putnam Company, 63 Fifth Ave., New
York.
This convenient little pamphlet contains brief descriptions of
some of the most common birds, the eagle, the owl, the parrot, the
crow, the turkey, the quail, the ostrich, the heron, the swan, and
the penguin. It is closely printed with numerous illustrations of
the structure and forms of the typical birds of each sort, and
gives in language that can well be understood by children, the
principal facts of interest.
It is sold at 20 cents, and will be found valuable to a large
class of teachers who are in search of material to interest their
pupils in the common birds of our country.
=Nests and Eggs of North American Birds=, by Oliver Davie, author of
"Methods in the Art of Taxidermy," etc. The Landon Press, Columbus,
Ohio.
This is the fifth edition of an excellent work that has already
won wide recognition as an exposition of how the birds build and
lay. It has been revised and enlarged considerably, and now
contains a profusion of cuts that will be highly appreciated.
Recognizing the difficulty the mind has in grasping the entire
meaning of a written description, the author has added to his
text a large number of well-executed drawings of the birds most
difficult to describe and has given their nests and eggs the
attention their importance to the naturalist demands.
The book consists of over five hundred pages octavo, closely
printed, and arranged so as to constitute a convenient and
exhaustive encyclopedia of the birds of this country and their
nests and eggs. Although the title of the book would lead one to
think the matter does not pertain to the habits of the birds, nor
their appearance, it is more complete in this respect than many
books written ostensibly to describe the birds themselves, and
in many of its articles almost complete life histories are to
be found. The nesting habits and the hatching of the eggs have
led the author on till the work has become a very readable one
for those who are by no means specialists on eggs and nests. The
writer has modestly disclaimed attempting to cover so much ground
and refers his readers to the works of Coues and Ridgway for
further particulars.
The numbers of those who do not let a summer pass without looking
into the lives of the birds which visit their country residences
are rapidly growing, and this growth of interest on the part of
thousands who do not wish to become experts but desire to enjoy
their feathered neighbors and their products most fully, has made
room for a large sale of this work. It has but to become known to
be possessed by all cultured households where trips to the country
are annually made.
To know the birds of one's locality by name and to be able to
identify their nests and watch their doings with some degree
of intelligence is an accomplishment which many desire and are
annually attaining. With this work in one's possession few birds
can remain in the vicinity without being identified. The gladness
and loss of selfish thoughts and motives that are the reward of
all those who lose their hearts to the birds and their growing
families do far more good in the world than any amount of drugs
and dieting.
Few people go to the country without having something they
wish to gain in the way of health. A prescription of bird life
taken regularly before meals has been found one of the greatest
cure-alls the world has produced. There is no work in existence
better calculated to promote this sort of convalescence than
this one on the nests and eggs that we so often run past in our
ignorance of the joy a bush or stump or tree has in store for
those who have a mind to find it.
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| Transcriber's Note: |
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| Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. |
| |
| Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant |
| form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. |
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| Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. |
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| Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs |
| and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that |
| references them. |
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| Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, |
| _like this_, bolded words by equal signs, =like this=. |
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| The Contents table was added by the transcriber. |
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