APPENDIX. 453 



" The diffusion of well-authenticated information regard- 

 ing the distribution of American birds is yet a matter for 

 future observation. There have been, no doubt, many im- 

 portant contributions on this subject, of late years, yet the 

 field is so extensive that many years must elapse before we 

 can lay claim to a thorough knowledge of many important 

 particulars, which patient research and well-timed energy 

 alone can solve. The author of the present little work, 

 while claiming for it the merit of careful observation, ex- 

 tending over a period of several years, at the same time 

 believes the plan of the catalogue to be capable of attaining 

 more useful results if enlarged in proportion to the nature 

 of the districts investigated. It is, therefore, to be hoped 

 that accurate observers may undertake similar records, by 

 means of which the next great work on the ornithology of 

 our country may contain a better collection of facts, repre- 

 senting the phenomena of the remoter districts, than has 

 yet been obtained." 



Believing that I can best serve the purposes of working 

 ornithologists by closely following the list given by Mr. 

 Turnbull in his work, from which I have already so exten- 

 sively quoted, I have in the following pages practically 

 reproduced that list, with annotations based upon the ob- 

 servations of the sixteen years which have elapsed since 

 Dr. Turnbull wrote his work. My list of birds, that may 

 be said to constitute the ornithic fauna of Mercer County, 

 numbers two hundred and seventeen species ; the list given 

 by Dr. Turnbull numbers three hundred and forty-two 

 species, and is given as the complete enumeration of the 

 birds of an area many hundred times as large as that re- 

 ferred to as the field of my own observations. Of the three 

 hundred and forty-two species given by Dr. Turnbull, fifty- 

 nine are under the heading of " Stragglers or Irregular Vis- 

 itants " ; which leaves us but two hundred and eighty-three 

 species as characteristic of the fauna, or properly belonging 

 to it. Deducting eleven species from my list of the birds 



