128 DAVENPORT ACADKMY OF SCIENCP:vS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



SCOPE. 



The limits of these pages forbid any attempt to introduce 

 descriptions of species. All of the species and subspecies of North 

 x\merican birds have been so completely and minutely described 

 l)y numerous and readily accessible authorities that an effort to 

 add descriptions to a faunal list m«ans simply added bulk and 

 repetition of work. With the different species already well char- 

 acterized and delimited, the province of a work of this kind should 

 be to add some contributions to our knowledge of their habits and 

 economic relations, their migrations; to trace their local distri- 

 l)Ution and comparative al)Undancc at the present time, and to 

 determine, if possible, what changes the rapid growth of .settle- 

 ment and civilization have wrought in our a\i-fauna during the 

 comparatively brief period since the settlement of our state; what 

 species have been compelled to succumb, and what species liave 

 succeeded in adapting themselves to the radical change in envi- 

 ronment which has almost universally taken place. 



HISTORICAL WORK. 



The earliest references which can be identified as relating to 

 birds actually observed wdthin the present limits of the state of 

 Iowa are found in the history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 

 which journeyed up the Mi.ssouri River during the summer of 

 1S04 and returned by the same route in the fall of 1806. Dr. 

 Elliott Coues, in his copious and critical notes upon this history, ' 

 has identified many of the species mentioned in the narrative, 

 and referred them to various points on the banks of the Missouri 

 in western Iowa. 



The next contribution to Iowa ornithology was made by the 



I. Histor}' of the Expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark to tlie source 

 of the Missouri River, thence across the Rocky ^Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, per- 

 formed during the years 1S04-5-6, by order of the Government of the I'nited .States. A 

 New Edition, Faithfully reprinted from tlie authorized edition of iSi4,ln' Elliott Coues. 

 Four vols. Francis P. Harper. 1893. 



