=Determining and studying the birds of a locality.=--To identify the various species of birds in the locality of the school it will be necessary to have some book giving the descriptions of all or most of the species of the region, with tables and keys for tracing out the different forms. Such manuals or keys are numerous now; the study of birds is one of the most popular lines of nature study, and a host of bird books has been published in the last few years. The best general manual is Coues's "Key to the Birds of North America," which includes not only keys for tracing and descriptions of all the known species of birds on this continent, but also accounts of the distribution, of the nesting and eggs, and of the plumage of the young birds, besides a thorough introduction to the anatomy and physiology of birds, and directions for collecting and preserving them. Jordan's "Manual of Vertebrates" gives keys and short descriptions of the birds found east of the Missouri River; Chapman's "Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America" is excellent. To be able to use these manuals it is necessary to have the bird's body in hand; and that means usually death for the bird. Recently there have been published several bird-keys which attempt to make it possible to determine species, the commoner ones at any rate, without such close examination. The birds in these books are usually grouped wholly artificially (without any reference to their natural relationships) according to such salient characteristics as color, markings, size, habit of perching, or running, or flying, etc. These characteristics are such as can presumably be made out in the living bird by aid of an opera-glass or often with the unaided eye. Such books make no pretence to be scientific manuals nor to include any but the more usual and strongly marked species. They are usually limited to the birds of a restricted region. Such books are readily obtainable. There are several popular illustrated "bird-magazines" devoted to accounts of the life and habits of birds. Of these "Bird-lore" is the organ of the Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds. [Illustration: FIG. 142.--Western chipping sparrow, _Spizella socialis arizonae_. (Photograph from life by Eliz. and Jos. Grinnell.)]