Frank Gouldsmith Speck
Published: 2017-10-22
Total Pages: 38
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Excerpt from Bird-Lore of the Northern Indians Men and their manners naturally hold first rank in the attention of the student and traveler. And yet whatever contributes to our experience is also of equal importance whether it be found in the animal or vegetable kingdom. In the realm of nature, birds are such social, intelligent and active beings that in the combination of the two spheres of observa tion, man-kind and birds, we find pleasant and profitable em ployment. The world of bird-life seems to have engaged the lively interest of men in ancient as well as in modern times, for there is hardly any part of creation within the reach of our observations which exhibits a more glorious display. Such a variety of pleasing scenes as the bird world shows, ever changing throughout the seasons, arising from various causes, and des tined for different purposes, naturally held a strong appeal to the primitive men who dwelt in the forests of North America. These scenes were free to the enjoyment and inspection of various tribes who developed different reactions to them under the influence of their differing inner lives. They observed that the order of birds, like themselves, constituted tribes and bands, separated by their different structure, manners and utterances, as each tribe, though subdivided into smaller groups, retains its form in customs and language particular to that nation or genus from which it seems to have descended. It may be said, I think without exaggeration, that the native Indians live much closer to Nature than most white peo ple could hope to do. Their knowledge of wildlife is therefore inexhaustible in quantity though it is often far from being scientifically correct. From their hchildhood, girls are taught much practical botany, the identity and use of scores of plants. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.