EDITOR S PREFACE. 9 



easily and most acceptably be devoted to the Water 

 Birds alone of New England. Much is to be expected 

 from the concluding volumes of Baird, Brewer, and 

 Ridgway's " History of North American Birds ; " but 

 these are still unpublished ; and meanwhile, with the 

 exception of what may be found upon the Waders 

 and Swimmers in the "Birds of the Northwest," now 

 already nine years old, no systematic work upon that 

 extensive and attractive series of Birds has appeared 

 since the Audubonian period. The growing suspicion 

 of fatality, so to speak, which attaches to this matter, 

 might lead an author contemplating the next systematic 

 treatise upon Birds to consider the expediency of be- 

 ginning at the other end of the current list, and working 

 up from AlcidcB towards the Ttirdidce. 



In the present volume some of the Water-Bird biog- 

 raphies have been pretty fairly elaborated, and special 

 pains have been taken to collate and sift the New Eng- 

 land records of the rarer species, whether of the land or 

 of the water, — those casual visitors which, while leaving 

 no decided impress upon our Avifauna, are nevertheless 

 a kind of beings which the ardent collector least delights 

 to entertain unawares. In the cases of these visits, few 

 and far between, the editor regrets still to find himself 

 so frequently at variance with statements of fact and 

 expressions of opinion of late authority upon the sub- 

 ject. Yet, in the end, the fairest reciprocity of author- 

 ship — whether regarding one whose hand has left the 



