PREFACE TO THE EDITION IN COLORS.
Without question, the simplest and most certain way in which to learn to know our birds is by examination of the birds themselves. Not every one, however, has access to an ornithological collection, and failing this, the best substitute for the bird is a colored plate which will accurately represent every shade and tint of its plumage. The widespread demand for a work containing illustrations of this nature is undoubted, but publishers have previously hesitated to expend the large sum necessary to produce satisfactorily colored plates, or have employed the cheap color processes with results far from successful.
The high praise which has been accorded the illustrations in the uncolored edition of Bird-Life is an assurance that bird lovers will therefore doubly welcome a work in which our birds are truthfully portrayed, not only in natural attitudes, but in natural colors as well. Photographic bromide copies of the original drawings for Bird-Life have been carefully colored by an expert colorist under the author's supervision, and are here reproduced by a lithographic process which insures absolute accuracy.
F. M. C.
New York City, October 1, 1897.
