LIFE OF WILSON. ciii 



" In endeavoring to collect materials for describing truly and fully our 

 feathered tribes, he has frequently had recourse to the works of those European 

 naturalists who have written on the subject ; he has examined their pages 

 with an eager and inquisitive eye; but his researches in that quarter have 

 been but too frecjuently repaid with disappointment, and often with disgust. 

 On the subject of the manners and mi(/ratioits of our birds, which in fact con- 

 stitute almost the only instructive and interesting parts of their history, all is 

 a barren and a dreary waste. A few vague and formal particulars of their 

 size, specific marks, &c., accompanied sometimes with figured representations 

 that would seem rather intended to caricature than to illustrate their originals, 

 is all that the greater part of them can boast of Nor are these the most 

 exceptionable parts of their performances; the novelty of fable, and the wild- 

 ness of fanciful theory, are frequently substituted for realities; and conjectitres 

 instead of facts called up for their support. Prejudice, as usual, has in 

 numerous instances united with its parent, ignorance, to depreciate and treat 

 with contempt what neither of them understood ; and the whole interesting 

 assemblage of the feathered tribes of this vast continent, which in richness of 

 plumage, and in strength, sweetness and variety of song, will be found to exceed 

 those of any other quarter of the globe, are little known save in the stuifed 

 cabinets of the curious, and among the abstruse pages and technical catalogues 

 of dry systematic writers. 



" From these barren and musty records, the author of the present work has 

 a thousand times turned with a delight bordering on adoration, to the magni- 

 ficent repository of the woods and fields — the Grand Aviary of Nature. In 

 this divine school he has studied from no vulgar copy ; but from the works of 

 the Great Master op Creation himself; and has read with rapture the 

 lessons of his wisdom, his goodness and his love, in the conformation, the habi- 

 tudes, melody and migrations of this beautiful portion of the work of his hands. 

 To communicate as correct ideas of these as his feeble powers were capable of, 

 and thus, from objects, that, in our rural walks, almost everywhere present 

 themselves, to deduce not only amusement and instruction, but the highest 

 incitements to virtue and piety, have been the author's most anxious and 

 ardent wish. On many of his subjects, indeed, it has not been in his power to 

 say much. The recent discovery of some, and the solitary and secluded habits 

 of others, have opposed great obstacles to his endeavors in this respect. But 

 a time is approaching when these obstacles will no longer exist. When the 

 population of this immense western Republic will have diff"used itself over 

 every acre of ground fit for the comfortable habitation of man — when farms, 

 villages, towns and glittering cities, thick as the stars in a winter's evening, 

 overspread the face of our beloved country, and every hill, valley and stream 

 has its favorite name, its native flocks and rural inhabitants ; then, not a 

 warbler shall flit through our thickets, but its name, its notes and habits will 

 be familiar to all ; repeated in their sayings, and celebrated in their village 

 songs. At that happy period, should any vestige or memory of the present 

 publication exist, be it known to our more enlightened posterity, as some apology 

 for the deficiencies of its author, that in the period in which he wrote, three- 

 fourths of our feathered tribes were altogether unknown even to the proprictorT 



