^^ 



INTIIDDICTIUN. 



ix 



As it tunit!il nut, liowovcii', tliis .stiimlatiitii was not mu) of so imuli iiriuticai 

 iiupDitaiKu lis luul ItoL'U exiMicti'tl, sincn tlio cost of the imlilication of the " Land 

 llinls of North America " was so great that the publialiers of that work would 

 have been unwilling to continue it at tlioir own risk and expense — and, in 

 fact, did decline to do so, when, after the stoppage of the ('aliforniii Survey, the 

 present work was offered to them for pidjlication by joint consent of the authors 

 and the former State (teologist of California. The latter, however, having devoted 

 himself, subsequently to the second and linal stoppage of the Survey in 1H74, 

 to a continuation — chietly at his own risk and oxihsuso — of the publication 

 of the material left in a more or less fragmentary condition in his hands, finally 

 concluded to take up the unfinished volumes of Ornithology; and, with the 

 generous co-operation of the Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 

 now presents them to the public, as forming at the same time a portion of tho 

 series tjf Alemoirs of that institution, and a continuation of tho Reports of 

 the Geological Survey of California. 



As in the previously pul)lished volumes of the North American Birds, tho 

 technical or descriptive portion of the present division of that work has been 

 projjared l)y Messrs. Baird and UidgWily ; and the latter has had the opportunity 

 of making, during tho printing, such additions and corrections as were rendered 

 necessary by the fact that several years have elapsed since the manuscript was 

 originally prepared for publication. The biographical portion of the volumes 

 devoted to the Water Birds is from the pen of Dr. T. M. Brewer — who, however, 

 did not live to see the beginning of the printing of this, the final, portion of 

 a work on which he had bestowed so much labor. The task of revising his 

 not entirely completed manuscript has fallen upon tho undersigned, who has 

 endeavored to do the best he could with it, esjiecially as regards the occasion- 

 ally somewhat uncertain orthography of tho names of persons and places. In 

 this he has had the assistance of Mr. J. A. Allen, of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology. 



The illustrations of this volume were, with few and unimportant exceptions, 

 drawn upon the wood by Mr. Edwin L. Sheppard, of . Philadelphia, and engraved 

 by Mr. Hobart H. Nichols, of Washington. The coloring of the heads was 

 done under the direction of Mrs. F. H. llussell, of Brookliue, Mass., from patterns 

 prepared by Mr. Ridgway. 



J. D. WHITNEY. 

 Cambridqe, Mass., March 31, 1884. 



ii 



