•> 



"WESTERN WILD SPORTS. 195 



mentioned this bii'd in his American Ornithology, although it is 

 impossible to conceive that he was ignorant of its existence, any- 

 more than that of the Wild Swan — Cygnus Americanus — the 

 latter bird especially frequenting the waters adjacent to Balti- 

 more, where he resided, and the former, 1 imagine, being in 

 his day even more than at present, a common article of sale in 

 the markets of that city. 



" Despite, however, his eloquence and ability as a writer, and 

 his acuteness and general accuracy as an observer of nature, it 

 appears to me that Mr. Wilson was in no respect a man of 

 system. He seems to have jotted down his notes concerning 

 every new bird, or species, as he met it ; to have thrown them 

 pellmell into his portfolio, and thereafter taken them out in a 

 lump and published them without arrangement certainly, and 

 perhaps without much revision. It appears to me that a care- ^ X(^ ^,^. 

 fully revised edition of Wilson's Ornithology, systematically 

 arranged, completed to the latest modern discoveries, and am- 

 plified with copious notes, is one of the desiderata of the litera- 

 ture of the day. This book, as it now exists, being so confused 

 in method, and so incomplete, as to afford a very imperfect idea 

 of the Ornithology of America, while the great and splendid / 

 works of Bonaparte and Audubon are so costly c(.s to be almost /. y*^ ' 

 entirely beyond the reach of the ordinary purchaser. 



The following description of our bird is from the Birds of 

 America by Mr. Audubon. Of its manners, haunts, and habits, 

 I shall speak more at large when I come to treat of it as an 

 object o^ pursuit as game. 



"Male, 49.68. Female, 37.54. 



" Breeds from Texas to Massachusetts and Vermont. In the 

 interior to the Missouri, and thence northward to Michigan. 

 Common, resident, though removing considerable distances in 

 autumn in pursuit of food. 



" Bill shortish, robust, slightly arched, rather obtuse, the base 

 covered by a bare membrane ; upper mandible with dorsal out- 

 line arched, the sides convex, the edges overlapping, the tip a 

 little declinate ; under mandible somewhat bulging toward the 





N^^ 



