vi INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 



bright foliage, I felt that an intimacy with them, not consisting 

 of friendship merely, but bordering on phrenzy, must accompany 

 my steps through life ; — and now, more than ever, am I per- 

 suaded of the power of those early impressions. They laid such 

 hold upon me, that, when removed from the woods, the prai- 

 ries, and the brooks, or shut up from the view of the wide 

 Atlantic, I experienced none of those pleasures most congenial 

 to my mind. None but aerial companions suited my fancy. 

 No roof seemed so secure to me as that formed of the dense 

 foliage imder which the feathered tribes were seen to resort, 

 or the caves and fissures of the massy rocks to which the dark- 

 winged Cormorant and the Cm-lew retired to rest, or to protect 

 themselves from the fmy of the tempest. My father generally 

 accompanied my steps, procured birds and flowers for me with 

 great eagerness, — pointed out the elegant movements of the 

 former, the beavity and softness of their plumage, the manifes- 

 tations of their pleasure or sense of danger, — and the always 

 perfect forms and splendid attire of the latter. My valued pre- 

 ceptor woidd then speak of the departure and return of birds 

 with the seasons, would describe their haunts, and, more won- 

 derful than all, their change of hvery ; thus exciting me to study 

 them, and to raise my mind toward their great Creator. 



A vivid pleasiure shone upon those days of my early youth, 

 attended with a calmness of feeling, that seldom failed to rivet 

 my attention for hom^s, whilst I gazed in ecstacy upon the pear- 

 ly and shining eggs, as they lay imbedded in the softest down, 

 or among dried leaves and twigs, or were exposed upon the 

 burning sand or weather-beaten rock of our Atlantic shores. I 

 was taught to look upon them as flowers yet in the bud. I 

 watched their opening, to see how Natm-e had provided each dif- 



