Excerpt from The Birds of the Isle of Pines Although the West Indian Islands were among the first regions of the New World to be visited by explorers with a scientific turn of mind, their fauna thus early becoming known to the naturalists of Europe, and although subsequent researches have greatly increased our knowledge, it is only in comparatively recent years that systematic attempts have been made to investigate the islands from the stand point of the zoogeographer, and with the same painstaking care as has been used in the case of certain sections of continental America. The West Indian Islands present a most inviting field for further investigation and, indeed, so far as their avifauna is concerned, an exhaustive'treatise on the subject remains to be written. The im portance of a study of island-life, considered in its bearing upon the various problems connected with the evolution of species, and their present distribution and relationships, has during the past four decades come to be realized. It is more and more felt that the study of the organism in relation to its environment, constituting the new science of ecology, is of equal importance with the study of form and function, and that carefully recorded data as to the habits and life history of a given species are often more valuable, even from the stand point of the pure systematist, than a large series of finely prepared and accurately labelled specimens. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.