NOTE.

The publishers’ acknowledgments are due to Miss Margaret Warner Morley and Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co. for permission to use “Life Growth,—­Frogs”; to Mr. W. S. Blatchley and The Popular Science Monthly for “How Animals Spend the Winter” and “Two Fops Among the Fishes”; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for “Birds’ Nests,” by John Burroughs; to Mr. L. Bruner and the Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union for “Birds in Their Relation to Agriculture”; to G. W. and E. G. Peckham for “A Wasp and Its Prey” and “Protective Resemblances in Spiders”; to President David Starr Jordan and The Popular Science Monthly for “Old Rattler and the King Snake”; to President Jordan and A. C. McClurg & Co. for “The Story of a Strange Land.”

LIST OF COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
THE CONDOR                              Frontispiece
THE GORILLA                            Face Page  40
THE YELLOW BELLIED WOODPECKER                     92
THE UMBRELLA BIRD                                154
THE GUANACO                                      230
THE VAMPIRE BAT                                  242
THE COW FISH                                     296

AND ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE
TEXT.

ANIMALS, BIRDS, AND FISHES

BY

DAVID STARR JORDAN, LL.D.

This volume is made up from the writings of naturalists who have told us of the behavior of animals as they have seen it at first hand and of the beginnings and the growth of life so far as they know about it.  In selecting these from the wealth of available material the editor has been guided by this rule:  The subject matter must be interesting to young people; it must be told in a clear and attractive style; and most important of all, it must deal with actualities.  We have seen in the last few years a marked revival of nature studies.  This has led to a wider range of interest in natural phenomena and in the growth and ways of animals and plants.  If this movement is not to be merely a passing fad, the element of truthfulness must be constantly insisted upon.  If a clever imagination, or worse, sentimental symbolism, be substituted for the truth of nature, the value of such studies is altogether lost.

The essence of character-building lies in action.  The chief value of nature study in character-building is that, like life itself, it deals with realities.  One must in life make his own observations, frame his own inductions, and apply them in action as he goes along.  The habit of finding out the best thing to do next and then doing it is the basis of character.  Nature-study, if it be genuine, is essentially doing.  To deal with truth is necessary, if we are to know truth when we see it in action.  The rocks and shells, the frogs and lilies, always