How to tell the Birds from the Flowers, and other Wood-cuts is a book by Robert Williams Wood. It presents the reader with a manual for flornithology; the classification of the resemblance between certain birds and flowers.

In the decades following the Civil War--as industrialization, urbanization, and economic expansion increasingly reshaped the landscape--many Americans began seeking adventure and aesthetic gratification through avian pursuits. By the turn of the century, hundreds of thousands of middle-and upper-class devotees were rushing to join Audubon societies, purchase field guides, and keep records of the species they encountered in the wild. Mark Barrow vividly reconstructs this story not only through the experiences of birdwatchers, collectors, conservationists, and taxidermists, but also through those of a relatively new breed of bird enthusiast: the technically oriented ornithologist. In exploring how ornithologists struggled to forge a discipline and profession amidst an explosion of popular interest in natural history, A Passion for Birds provides the first book-length history of American ornithology from the death of John James Audubon to the Second World War. Barrow shows how efforts to form a scientific community distinct from popular birders met with only partial success. The founding of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1883 and the subsequent expansion of formal educational and employment opportunities in ornithology marked important milestones in this campaign. Yet by the middle of the twentieth century, when ornithology had finally achieved the status of a modern profession, its practitioners remained dependent on the services of birdwatchers and other amateur enthusiasts. Environmental issues also loom large in Barrow's account as he traces areas of both cooperation and conflict between ornithologists and wildlife conservationists. Recounting a colorful story based on the interactions among a wide variety of bird-lovers, this book will interest historians of science, environmental historians, ornithologists, birdwatchers, and anyone curious about the historical roots of today's birding boom.

To paraphrase Saul Bellow, it is extremely difficult to escape from the conceptual bottles into which we have been processed, or even to become aware that we are confined within them. Anthro pocentrism, an ancient tradition, is an intellectual constraint that has continually impeded objective probing of the universe around and within us. We are probably born with that constriction, perhaps as a result of evolutionary selection or because each of us has been created in the image of the Deity. But it is only the core of our mental "gestalt. " Around it we find additional shells of intellectual obstruc tions deposited by accretion from our family, our teachers, our experi ences and the society in which we are immersed. It is very hazardous to embrace novel scientific ideas. Personal and social experiences show that the vast majority turn out to be failures. What standards can one use to make judgments? There is a universal tendency to rely on "common sense;" but as Einstein pointed out, this is a collection of views, sensible or not, imprinted in us before the age of sixteen. I have found it a challenge to convince young students that much of what they are certain about and, in fact, correct about, is actually contrary to common sense. For example, on any bright day, anyone who is not blind or an idiot can see the sun literally moving around the earth, from east to west.