In the Biblical history of the creation, birds occurred in the fifth epoch of time, when the evolution of grass and herbs and trees and seeds and fruits had made for them a paradise. With the grass and trees and seeds and fruits had evolved a variable diet for the feathered folk, and by instinct they have continued to follow after their food, migrating on merry tours the wide world over. Lovers of them from earliest dates have discoursed of their ways and means, of their habits, their favorite resorts, their uses relative to cultivation of lands, their faults in connection with civilization. Students of nature have divided the birds into "classes" and "species," as the human race itself is divided. As "order is heaven's first law," ornithologists have taught us to distinguish it in the study of birds; and so we have the "groups," always with reference to individual habits and anatomical peculiarities. In the Old World, ornithology as a science dates perhaps from Aristotle, 384 years before Christ. True, he was a teacher of A, B, C's on the subject, but he set students to "thinking," But there were students before Aristotle; if not students of science, they were students of religion. It is to religion in many forms that we owe the romance of ornithology. We may call this phase of the subject "superstition." The word itself is almost gruesome to the unlettered imagination. It suggests uncanny things, ghosts and goblins, and other creatures that are supposed to wander around in the dark, because they were never seen at midday or any other time. To the educated person actual faith in ghosts and goblins has given place to a mildly fanciful imagination which indulges in the flavor of superstition, as one takes light desserts after a full meal. And so we have the romance of superstition for the intelligent.