INTRODUCTION. 



At the request of the Secretary of the Indiana Horticultural Society, Mr. C. 

 M. Hobbs, last fall, I presented at the meeting in December, 1891, some remarks 

 upon the birds of Indiana. At the meeting Mr. Hobb-! and his successor, the pres- 

 ent Secretary, Mr. W. H. Ragan, requested me to prepare a list of the birds of the 

 State, together with brief notes concerning the species mentioned, to be published 

 instead of the notes presented to the meeting, the edition of the volume of the meet- 

 ing of 1879, containing Dr. A. W. Brayton's "Catalogue of the Birds of Indiana," 

 having been exhausted by reason of the great demand for the work, which far ex- 

 ceeded that for any other volume of the Society's " Transactions." After consent- 

 ing to undertake the present paper I wa", through the courtesy of Messrs. Eites i& 

 Lauriat, of Boston, Mass. — the publishers of Coues' Key to North American Birds — 

 enabled to secure, for the purpose of illustrating this work, such cuts as I desired 

 t'lat were in their possession. The U. S. Department of Agriculture, through Dr. 

 C Hart Merriam, Chief of the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, 

 was also kind enough to furnish a cut of the English Sparrow. 



In the preparation of this paper I have had available the notes of my own 

 observations, cliiefly in the foutheaslern part of the State, covering the greater part 

 of fourteen years; also, the material which has been put into my hands as curator 

 of the Department of Ornithology of the Indiana Academy of Science. After be- 

 ginning my own investigations and carrying them on independently for a year, I 

 wag favored with the cooperation of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Chief of the Division of 

 Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, by reason of which I have been enabled 

 to examine the migration reports, covering the State of Indiana for a series of years. 

 I have also been much favored by the assistance so freely given by Mr. Robert 

 Ridgway, curator of Department of Birds of the United States National Museum, 

 Washington, D. C; Dr. F. W. Langdon and Mr. Charles Dury, Cincinnati, O.; Mr. 

 Ruthven Deane and Mr. H. K. Coale, Chicago, III. ; Prof. B W. Evermann, form- 

 erly of the State Normal School, Terre Haute, lud., now of the U. S. Fish Commis- 

 sion, Washington, D. C; Dr. A. W. Brayton, Indianapolis, Ind.; Hon. R. Wes. 

 McBride and his son, Mr. H. W. McBride, Elkhart (formerly of Waterloo), Ind.; 

 Mrs. Jane L. Hine, Sedan, Ind.; Mr. E R. Quick, Brookville, Ind., and many 

 others hereinafter mentioned. In addition to these I have given the authority of 

 many notes in the body of this paper, and have appended hereto a list of the per- 

 sons who have contributed to the notes at hand from which the present list is com- 

 piled To each of them I desire to express my thanks for the cooperation received 

 and to acknowledge the assistance .so kindly given, by reason of which this paper is 

 as complete as it is. I shall be pleased to continue to receive the cooperation of 

 each of those persons to the end that aH fragments of knowledge concerning the 

 birds of our State may be preserved. 



