How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers

This Novel is a collection of poems by scientist Robert Williams Wood, themed on nature. The poems explore the distinguishing features between birds and the flowers that resemble them, picking a pair comprising of one each to create a play on words. Some of the matched pairs are: 'The carrot and the parrot', 'the pelican and the panicle', 'the cowbird and the cowslip' and 'the tern and the turnip.' The book is illustrated with drawings.

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 a series of clever nonsense verses, the author gives directions by which any one can distinguish the bird from the flower that sounds like it." -New York Times "Obviously a satire directed against the sentimental nature-study literature which sometimes masquerades as scientific teaching, particularly in the United States." -Nature "Professor Robert W. Wood, of Johns Hopkins University, author of an advanced treatise on the theory of light and various scientific papers, such as the 'Fluorescence and Magnetic Rotation Spectra of Sodium Vapor and Their Analysis,' might claim close affinity to Lewis Carroll, the profound mathematician and creator of the inimitable 'Alice in Wonderland.' Nature students who have hitherto wrestled with the annoying problem of differentiating between such homologous species as the crow and the crocus, the parrot and the carrot, the cow-bird and the cowslip, the blue mountain glory and the blue morning glory, will hail this little volume with shouts of joy. No longer need one worry over the close resemblance of the pecan to the toucan." -The Publisher

Plants and birds or animals with similar sounding names are depicted with misleading drawings and rhyming verse.

Excerpt from How to Tell the Birds From the Flowers: A Manual of Flornithology for Beginners The Quail T he Kale; 16. The Pecan The The Auk The The Cat-bird The Catnip The Ibis The The Butter ball'oo-m'the Buttercup 22. 23. The Pipe The Snipe 24: The Roc The The Lark The Larkspur 26 The Puffin qffinf. -47. 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.