146 PREFACE TO VOLS. II. AND III. 



By all the land birds of the United States, we must be understood to 

 mean those we have personally ascertained. While discoveries are 

 daily making in the Ornithology of Europe, nay even among the 

 feathered tribes of the island of Great Britain, whose limited extent, 

 peculiar situation, and high degree of civilization, ought to have long 

 since rendered her productions thoroughly known, it would be highly 

 presumptuous to imagine that no bird remained to be discovered in a 

 country embracing such a vast extent of unexplored territory as this. 

 Mr. J. J. Audubon, painter-naturalist, who has devoted twenty years of 

 his life to studying nature in the forests of the West, has gratified us 

 with the sight of several drawings of new species which will appear 

 among the plates he is now engaged in publishing. It is greatly to be 

 wished, for the advancement of American Ornithology, that while his 

 ^work, so magnificent, but necessarily so slow in coming forth, is prepar- 

 ing, a scientific abstract of his discoveries should be drawn up without 

 delay. 



Besides the new discoveries that may be daily expected, many known 

 species will probably hereafter be found entitled to enter the Fauna of 

 these states. They may be arranged in two classes, of which the first 

 will comprise those already well known to inhabit the more northern 

 regions of America, and which may at some future period be ascer- 

 tained to extend their range within our limits : these are all common to 

 both continents ; as instances we may adduce Loxia pytiopsittacus, 

 Saxicola oenanthe, Tetrao alhus, and T. lagopxis, &c. Already in the 

 present volume their companions, Emheriza lapponica and Picus tridao- 

 tylus, take their station, for the first time, among the birds of the 

 United States. The other class will include those tropical American 

 birds which in all probability visit, either occasionally or at regular 

 periods, the southern borders of Florida and Louisiana, thus entitling 

 them to a place in this work. The Falco dispar, and Columha leuco- 

 cepJiala, of the present volumes, may be cited as examples of the latter 

 description. 



But in our opinion the most interesting, and towards which we most 

 earnestly desire to direct the attention of American naturalists and col- 

 lectors, are those species once noticed by former authors, but from not 

 having been since observed, now become in a manner obsolete, though 

 still without being declared nominal. Such was for a period the case 

 with Garndvs sfelleri of this volume, and is yet with Si/It'ia velata apd 



