HISTOIUCAL PREFACE. xxv 



of Vermont" (1853) paid attentiou to the birds of that state. Birds of Wisconsin were 

 catalogued by P. R. Hoy ; of Ohio, by M. C. Eead and Robert Kennicott ; of Illinois, by 

 H. Pratten ; of Indiana, by R. Haymond ; of Massachusetts, by F. W. Putnam ; and 

 various other "fiunal lists" and local annotations appeared, including President Jeffer- 

 son's Virginian ornithology, three-quarters of a century out of date. Dr. T. C. Henry 

 and Dr. A. L. Heermann wrote upon birds of the Southwest ; Reinhardt continued ob- 

 servations on Greenland birds; Dr. Henry Bryant published some valuable papers. 

 The since very eminent English ornithologist, Dr. P. L. Sclater, appeared during this 

 period in the present connection. The series of Pacific Railroad Reports, which were 

 to culminate, so far as ornithology is concerned, with the famous ninth volume, were in 

 progress ; the sixth volume, containing Dr. J. S. Newberry's valuable and interesting 

 article upon the birds of California and Oregon, was published in 1857. Thus the 

 Cassinian period, besides being marked as already said in its broader features, was 

 notable in its details for the increase in the number of active -w^orkers, the extent and 

 variety of their independent observations, and the consequent accumulation of materials 

 ready to be worked into shape and system. 



(18.'»8-18— .) 

 The Bairdian Period. — The ninth volume of the " Pacific Railroad Reports " was an 

 epoch-maliing work, bearing the same relation to the times that the respective works 

 of Audubon and Wilson had sustained in former years. A great amount of material — 

 not all of which is more than hinted at in the foregoing paragraph — was at the service 

 of Professor Baird. In the hands of a less methodical, learned, and sagacious naturalist, 

 — of one less capable of elaborating and systematizing, — the result would probably have 

 Ijeen an ordinary official report upon the collections of birds secured during a few years 

 by the naturalists of the several explorations and surveys for a railroad route from the 

 Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Ocean. But having already transformed the eighth 

 volume of the Reports from such a " public document " into a systematic treatise on 

 North American Mammals, this author did the same for the birds of North America, 

 with the cooperation of Cassin and Lawrence. This portly quarto volume, published in 

 1858, represents the most important and decided single step ever taken in North Ameri- 

 can ornithology in all that relates to the technicalities of the science. It effected a 

 revolution — one already imminent in consequence 'of Cassin's studies — in classification 

 tnd nomenclature, nearly all the names of our birds which had been in use in the 

 Audubonian epoch being changed in accordance with more modern usages in generic 

 and specific determinations. While the work contains no biographical matter, — nothing 

 of the life-history of birds, it gives lucid and exact diagnoses of the species and genera 

 known at the time, with copious synonymy and critical commentary. Various new 

 genera are characterized, and many new species are described. The influence of tlie 

 great work was immediate and widespread, and for many years the list of names of the 

 738 species contained in the work remained a standard of nomenclature from which 

 few desired or indeed were in position to deviate. The value of the work was further 

 enhanced in 1860 by its republication, identical in the text, but with the addition of an 

 atlas of 100 colored plates. Many of these plates were the same as those which had 

 -Mpcared in other volumes of the Pacific Railroad Reports, notably the sixth and tenth 



