18 INTRODUCTION. 



" Sings darkling, and in the shadiest covert hid, 

 Tunes her nocturnal notes ; " 



nor the lark 



" The herald of the morn," 



flies within three thousand miles of our own haunts. 

 Thus it is that knowing so little of the creatures in whose 

 midst we live, and mentally familiar by our daily reading 

 with the tribes of another hemisphere, the forms of one 

 continent and the names and characters of another, are 

 strangely blended in most American minds. And in this 

 dream-like phantasmagoria, where fancy and reality are 

 often so widely at variance, in which the objects we see, 

 and those we read of are wholly different, and where bird 

 and beast undergo metamorphoses so strange, most of us 

 are content to pass through life. 



But there is a pleasant task awaiting us. We may all, 

 if we choose, open our eyes to the beautiful and wonderful 

 realities of the world we live in. Why should we any 

 longer walk blindfold through the fields ? Americans, we 

 repeat, are peculiarly placed in this respect ; the nature of 

 both hemispheres lies open before them, that of the old 

 world having all the charm of traditional association to 

 attract their attention, that of their native soil being 

 endued with the still deeper interest of home affections 



