Birds in Their Relations to Man Author:Ned Dearborn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC ORNITHOLOGY. Whrn Columbus was making that eventful voyage which led to the discovery of the New World, he was cheere... more »d by the sight of small birds that appeared beside his ship, telling him of his approach to land. And ever since then these children of the air have been of interest to the white people who have come to America, as they had been for untold ages before to the red men who roamed over the continent. The early New England settlers were troubled by some birds against which they declared war, and cheered by others to which they extended the offerings of friendship. And even in those early days there were some men who found in the study of birds a source of delight to which they gladly gave their time. It is nearly two centuries since Mark Catesby wandered through the wilds of Florida and Carolina, seeking out the birds and other animals of those unexplored regions, the publication of his results having been begun in 1731. Towards the end of the eighteenth century there were many workers in the field, the most prominent being Bartram, Latham, and Barton. And before the end of that century Alexander Wilson came over from Scotland to begin those pedler journeys during which he became interested iti American birds. At the opening of the nineteenth century Wilson was greatly interested in our bird life, and as early as 1808 began the publication of his splendid volumes on American Ornithology. As Dr. T. S. Palmer has well said,—in an admirable paper,i of i A Review of Economic Ornithology, Yearbook, Dept. Agr., 1899, pp. 259-292. part of which the present chapter is necessarily a poor parallel, —this work of Wilson's laid the true foundation of ornithology in the United States. And it contained many references to the purely ...« less