xvi INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



nithologically inclined, it is very much as if 

 all the birds had just been created, or, at 

 the very least, had just been let out of the 

 ark. So I found it. Like the Lord's mercies, 

 they were new every morning and fresh 

 every evening. Such an additional pleasure 

 as it was, too, to meet all those lovely 

 strangers so near home, and in what, to my 

 benighted apprehension, was so unpromis- 

 ing a place. Nobody had ever told me that 

 a city park is one of the likeliest of all 

 places in which to look for nocturnal birds 

 of passage ; that the nightly glare of a great 

 city has something like the well-known fas- 

 cination of a lighthouse for such travelers, 

 especially in foggy weather. It was twenty 

 years afterward that a friend of mine in- 

 quired of one of our most distinguished or- 

 nithologists where he should go in May to 

 obtain sight of certain rare warblers that 

 had hitherto eluded his ken, and was an- 

 swered, much to his surprise, I think, 

 though an undistinguished friend had al- 

 ready given him precisely the same advice, 

 *' Go to Central Park, New York." 



