vi PREFACE. 



iici'oss to till' I'lifilie Cdiist, iuiil tliiil ol' Jiiliii Iv. Towii.send and Mr. Nxittall, 

 lidtli (if wlumi iiiiiil(! sdiuf collcclidiis and lirou^iit hack iiulicfs ol tlio (•(Uiu- 

 Irv, \\liii;li, liuwevur, tlicv wvw iiiialik' to cxjdini! to any ,L,M'(!at extent. The 

 riiliiv ic^ioii ut' Texas, New Mexico, Coloiiidn, Aii/.uua, Nevada, and (.'ali- 

 Inrnia was uiivisited, as also a ^n'cat poi'tidn ul' lemtovy north of tlie United 

 States hoiuidarv, inehidin,t;' IJritisli ('olund)ia and Alaska. 



.V work liy Sir.lolin ilieliardson, l'ornnu,n a vulunie in his .serie.s of " Fauna 

 r>oreali-Ainericaiia," in refeienee to the oruitlioloy;y of tlie region covered by 

 tlie lludsiin r>ay Company's operations, was puMished in 1831, and has 

 lieen nnuh nsed liy Mr. Audubon, luit endmices little or nothing of the great 

 breeding-grounds of the water birds in tlie neighliorliood of the Great Slave 

 and liear 1-ake.s, the Upper Vukon, and the .sliores of the Arctic coast. 



Tt will thu.s be seen that a third of a century has elap.sed since any at- 

 tempt has been made to present a systematic history of the birds of North 

 America. 



The oliject of the ])resent work is to give, in as concise a form as jjossible, 

 an accoiuit of what is known of tlie birds, not only of the United States, but 

 of the whole region of Xorth America north of the l)Oundary-line of Mexico, 

 including (ireenland, on the one sitle, and Alaska M'ith its islands on the 

 otiier. The puldished materials for such a history are so copious that it is a 

 matter of surjn'ise that they have not been sooner utilized, consisting, as they 

 do, of numerous scattered l)iograi)hies and reports of many government expe- 

 ditions and ])rivat(^ exjiloralions. l>ut the most ])ro(hictive source has been 

 tlie great amount of manuscript contaiiunl in the archives of the Smithsonian 

 Institution in the foiin of correspondence, elaborate reports, and the field- 

 notes of collectors and tiavelleis, the use of which, for the present work, has 

 be(!n liberally allowed by i'mlcssor Henry. JJy far the most important of 

 these consist of notes made by the late IJol>ert Kennicott in Hriti-sh America, 

 and received from him and other gentlemen in the Hudson I'ay Territory, 

 who were brought into intimate relationship with the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion throngli ]\Ir. Kennicott's efforts. Among them may be mentioned more 

 es]iecially Mr. \l. .MacFarlane, Mr. V,. II. b'oss, :\Ir. James Lockhart, ]\Ir. 

 i/iwivnce (lark, Mr. Strachan -lones, and others, whose names will appear 

 in the coiu'se of tiie work. The especial value of the (iommunications re- 

 ceived from tliese geiitlenu'n lies in the fact that they resided for a long 

 time in a region to which a Lirge proportion <if the raiiacious and water birds 

 of North America resort during the sunnner for iiu'ubation, and which until 

 recently has been sealed to explorers. 



K(pially servicenble has been the information received from the region of 

 the Yukon iJiver and Alaska generally, including the Aleutian Islands, as 

 supplied liy Messrs. ifobert Kennicott, William II. Dall, Henry M. Bannister, 

 Henry W. Elliott, and others. 



It should be understood that tlie remarks as to tlu; absence of general works 

 on American Ornithology, since the time of Audubon, apply oidy to the life 



