XxX HISTORICAL PREFACE. 
tated by the attentions of Mr. Robert Ridgway, the Curator of Ornithology. And may 
that less tangible but not less real source of strength which inheres in the sympathetic 
and genial intercourse of a lifetime continue to be mine to draw upon, for all my works, 
from my warm friend, J. A. Allen, the first President of the American Ornithologists’ 
Union. 
‘* Prefaces,” says some one, ‘‘ever were and still are but of two sorts; . . . still the 
author keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing, when, at the beginning of his 
book he enters, either with a halter about his neck, submitting himself to his reader’s 
mercy whether he shall be hanged, or no; or else in a huffing manner he appears with 
the halter in his hand, and threatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good 
word.” But I wish neither to hang nor be hanged ; I wish the work were better than it 
is, for my reader’s sake ; I wish the author were better than he is, for my own sake ; and 
above all I wish that every author may rise superior to his best work, to the end that the 
man himself be judged above his largest achievements. It is well to do great things, 
but better still to be great. 
E. C. 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
Wasuinecton, D.C., Aprin, 1884. 
