8 editor's preface. 



In no other part of the United States have the Birds 

 of our country been so closely and successfully studied as 

 in New England, where a host of zealous and watchful 

 field-naturalists, stimulated and to a great extent led 

 by the Nuttall Ornithological Club, have brought our 

 knowledge of bird-life in all its details near that degree 

 of perfection which is witnessed in the writings of 

 British authors upon the Birds of their own islands. 

 The material for an exhaustive treatise upon New 

 England Ornithology — if it be desired to have a com- 

 plete special History of New England Birds apart from 

 those of North America at large — is ample and invit- 

 ing. Much of it, hitherto widely scattered and in the 

 raw, has been brought together and to a degree system- 

 atized in the present treatise, numberless sources of 

 information having been utilized as well as the untoward 

 circumstances permitted ; but, so far from having ex- 

 hausted the readily accessible data upon the subject is 

 the editor, that he can only look upon the result of his 

 labors as a convenient means to an end not yet accom- 

 plished. Such remains the case, more particularly, with 

 the Water Birds ; in respect of which the very richness 

 of the material of which he has been unable to fully 

 avail himself has been rather an embarrassment than 

 otherwise. While inaccuracies of statement may pos- 

 sibly prove to be few and not serious, very much has 

 been left unsaid through sheer stress of time and space. 

 A volume larger than either part of this treatise might 



