8 INTRODUCTION. 



years of application are necessary to enable a person, wliatever may be 

 his talents or diligence, to handle the graver with the facility and effect 

 of the pencil ; while the time, thus consumed, might be more advanta- 

 geously employed in finishing drawings, and collecting facts for the de- 

 scriptive parts, which is the proper province of the Ornithologist. Every 

 person who is acquainted with the extreme accuracy of eminent engra- 

 vers, must likewise be sensible of the advantage of having the imper- 

 fections of the pencil corrected by the excellence of the graver. Every 

 improvement of this kind the author has studiously availed himself of; 

 and has frequently furnished the artist with the living or newly-killed 

 subject itself to assist his ideas. 



In coloring the impressions, the same scrupulous attention has been 

 paid to imitate the true tints of the original. The greatest number of the 

 descriptions, particularly those of the nests, eggs, and plumage, have been 

 written in the woods, with the subjects in view, leaving as little as possi- 

 ble to the lapse of recollection : as to what relates to the manners, 

 habits, &c., of the birds, the particulars on these heads are the result of 

 personal observation, from memoranda taken on the spot ; if they differ, 

 as they will in many points, from former accounts, this at least can be 

 said in their behalf, that a single fact has not been advanced which the 

 writer was not himself witness to, or received from those on whose judg- 

 ment and veracity he believed reliance could be placed. When his own 

 stock of observations has been exhausted, and not till then, he has had 

 recourse to what others have said on the same subject, and all the most 

 respectable performances of a similar nature have been consulted, to 

 which access could be obtained ; not neglecting the labors of his prede- 

 cessors in this particular path, Messrs. Catesby and Edwards, whose 

 memories he truly respects. But, as a sacred regard to truth requires 

 that the errors or inadvertencies of these authors, as well as of others, 

 should' be noticed, and corrected, let it not be imputed to unworthy 

 motives, but to its true cause, a zeal for the promotion of that science, 

 in which these gentlemen so much delighted, and for which they have 

 done so much. 



From the writers of our own country the author has dei'ived but little 

 advantage. The first considerable list of our birds was published in 

 1787, by Mr. Jefferson, in his celebrated "Notes on Virginia," and con- 

 tains the names of one hundred and nine species, with the designations of 

 Linnaeus and Catesby, and references to Buffon. The next, and by far 

 the most complete that has yet appeared, was published in 1791, by 

 Mr. William Bartram, in his " Travels through North and South Caro- 

 lina," &c., in which two hundred and fifteen different species are enume- 

 rated, and concise descriptions and characteristics of each added, in Latin 

 and English. Dr. Barton, in his " Fragments of the Natural History of 

 Pennsylvania," has favored us with a number of remarks on this sub- 



