JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org..
University of California Press and AmericanOrnithologists' Union are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Auk. result of Stresemann's brief summary, there was a flurry of interest in this field for a time before the war. For example, Gordon (1934) outlined a number of problems which are still current. Allard (1934) added a few pertinent observations, and Schildmacher (1936) reported on the survival times of several European finches when maintained on various salt solutions and dilutions of sea water.In America, the pioneer quantitative and experimental works of Kendeigh (1939; 1944) on evaporative water loss in the House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) and House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), and those of his student Seibert (1949) on water consumption of White-throated Sparrows (Zonotrickia albicollis), House Sparrows, and Slate-colored Juncos (Junco hyemalis), supplemented the more naturalistic studies of Vorhies (1928;
1945) on water deprivation of Gambel's Quail (Lophortyx gambelii) and Harlequin Quail (Cyrtonyx mo-ntezumae) and of Sumner (1935) and Stoddard (1931) on the use of succulent vegetation as a source of water by California Quail (Lophortyx californicus) and Bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus), respectively. Although very astute inferences about the water relations of birds based on natural history observation have occasionally appeared in the literature (see, for example, Grinnell and Miller, 1944), we know of no other quantitative or experimental studies on the water economy of wild land birds prior to 1950.Nature of the problem.-Our goal in investigating the water economy of birds is to gain an understanding of how birds obtain and utilize water in the diverse, and often extremely challenging, environments which they successfully occupy. Such an understanding can be attained only if birds are treated as integrated and functioning organisms adapted to their environments. It cannot be sought solely in terms of natural history, or of physiology, or of anatomy, or of behavior. The role of each of these aspects of the performance of the organism in the total pattern of its life must be assayed. From the standpoints of ecology and behavior it is important to find out how birds acquire water from the environment and how the natural conditions under which birds exist determine their needs for water. From the standpoints of physiology and anatomy, it is necessary to quantify the capacities and limitations of birds with respect to maintaining water balance under given environmental conditions. This quantification requires information on water-conserving mechanisms, rates of water exchange with the environment, systems of fluid transport, and mech...
