HISTORICAL PREFACE. 



remains, 

 , period— 



Wliji: a modern Hesiod to essay — neither a cos- 

 niogoii} nor a theoguny — but the genesis of even the 

 least department of human knowledge, — were lie to 

 seek the beginnings of American Ornithology, he would 

 find It only in Chaos. For from this sprang all things, 



great and small alike, 

 to pass through Night 

 and Nemesis to the 

 light of days which 

 first see orderly pro- 

 gress in the course 

 of natural evolution, 

 when is first estab- 

 lished some sequence 

 of events we recognize 

 as causes and effects. 

 Then there is system, 

 and formal law ; there 

 science becomes possi- 

 ble ; there its possible 

 history begins. 



Long was the time 

 during which the birds 

 of our country were 

 known to its inhab- 

 itants, after the fash- 

 ion of the people of 

 those days, — known 

 as things of which use 

 could be made, and 

 studied, too, that use 

 might be made of them. 

 But this period is pre- 

 historic; no evidence 

 save in some quaint pictograph or rudely graven image. There followed a 

 shorter by far than the former one, though it endures to-day — when the same 



