b 



HISTORICAL PREFACE.* XXlll 



insensibly established, may be considered to have closed the Anduboniau epoch, — the 

 Audubouian period thus extending through the nine years after 184-4. 



Whilf Audubon was finishing, several meutionable events occurred. I have already 

 spoken of Bonaparte's "List" of 1838, and of the 1840 edition of Nuttall's "Manual." 

 Richardson in 1837 contributed to the Report of the Sixth Meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science an elaborate and important " Report on North 

 American Zoology," relating in due part to birds. The distinguished Danish naturalist, 

 Reinhardt, wrote a special treatise on Greenland Birds, 1838; W. B. 0. Peabody one 

 upon the birds of Massachusetts, 1839. The important Zoology of Captain Beecliey's 

 Voyage appeared in 1839, with the birds done by N. A. Vigors. Maximilian, Prince 

 of Wied, published his " Reise in das Innere Nord- America " in 1839-41. Sixteen new 

 species of birds from Texas were described and figured by J. P. Giraud in 1841, and 

 the same author's useful "Birds of Long Island" was published in 1844. This year 

 saw also the bird-volume of De Kay's " Zoology of New York." The Rev. J. H. Linsley 

 furnished a notable catalogue of the birds of Connecticut in 1843. A name intimately 

 associated with Audubon's is that of J. K. Townsend, whose fruitful travels in the 

 West in company with Nuttall in 1834 resulted in adding to our list the many new 

 species which were published by Townsend himself in 1837, and also utilized by 

 Audubon. Townsend's "Narrative" of his journey appeared in 1839; and the same 

 year saw the beginning of a large work which Townsend projected, an " Ornithology 

 of the United States," which, however, progressed no further than one part or number, 

 being killed by the octavo edition of Audubon. In 1837 I first find the name of a 

 friend of Audubon which often appears in his work — that of Dr. Thomas Mayo Brewer, 

 who wrote on the birds of Massachusetts in this year, and in 1840 brought out his use- 

 ful and convenient duodecimo edition of " Wilson," in one volume. In 1844, Audubon's 

 last effectual year, the brothers W^m. M. and S. F. Baird appear, with a list of the binls 

 of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, having the year previously, in July, 1843, described tAvo new 

 species of flycatchers, in the first paper ever written by the one who Avas to make the 

 succeeding epoch; and it is significant that the last bird in Audubon's work was named 

 "Emberiza bairdii." 



Such were the aspects of the ornithological sky as the glorious Audubonian sun 

 approached and passed the zenith ; still more significant were the signs of the times as 

 that orb neared its golden western horizon. In the interval between 1844 and 1853, 

 Baird and Brewer continued ; Cassin and Lawrence appeared in various papers ; and 

 round these names are grouped those of "William Gambel, with new and interesting ob- 

 servations in the Southwest ; of George A. McCall and S. W. Woodhouse, in the same 

 connection; and of Holboll in respect of Greenland birds. The most important con- 

 tributions were the several papers published by Gambel, in 1845 and subsequently, and 

 Baird's Zoology of Stansbury's Expedition, 1852. But no period-marking, still less epuch- 

 making, work accelerated the setting of the sun of Audubon. 



The Bairdiax Epoch: 1853-18—. 

 (1853-1858.) 

 The Cassinian Period. — While much material was accumulating from the explora- 

 tion of the great West, and the Bairdian period was rapidly nearing ; while Brewer and 



