HISTORICAL PREFACE. 
WeERE a modern Hesiod to essay — neither a cos- 
mogony nor a theogony — but the genesis of even the 
least department of human knowledge, — were he to 
seek the beginnings of American Ornithology, he would 
find it only in Chaos. For from this sprang all things, 
great and small alike, 
to pass through Night 
and Nemesis to the 
light of days which 
first see orderly pro- 
gress in the course 
of natural evolution, 
when is first estab- 
lished some sequence 
of events we recognize 
as causes and effects. 
Then there is system, 
and formal law ; there 
science becomes possi- 
ble ; there its possible 
history begins. 
Long was the time 
during which the birds 
of our country were 
known to its inhab- 
itants, after the fash- 
ion of the people of 
those days, — known 
as things of which use 
could be made, and 
studied, too, that use 
might be made ofthem. 
But this period is pre- 
historic; no evidence 
remains, save in some quaint pictograph or rudely graven image. There followed a 
period— shorter by far than the former one, though it endures to-day — when the same 
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