xviii INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 



new to me, yet I have never known the desire above alluded to. 

 This feeling I still cherish ; and in spite of the many injunc- 

 tions which I have received from naturalists far more eminent 

 than I can ever expect to be, I have kept, and still keep, 

 unknown to others, the species, which, not finding portrayed 

 in any published work, I look upon as new, having only given 

 in my Illustrations a number of them proportionate to the 

 drawings of already known species that have been engraved. 

 Attached to the descriptions of these, you wdl find the place 

 and date of their discovery. I do not, however, intend to claim 

 any merit for these discoveries, and should have liked as well 

 that the objects of them had been previously known, as this 

 would have saved some unbelievers the trouble of searching for 

 them in books, and the disappointment of finding them actually 

 new. I assure you, good reader, that, even at this moment, I 

 should have less pleasm-e in presenting to the scientific world 

 a new bird, the knowledge of whose habits I do not possess, 

 than in describing the peculiarities of one long since discovered. 

 There are persons whose desire of obtaining celebrity in- 

 duces them to suppress the knowledge of the assistance which 

 they have received in the composition of their works. In many 

 cases, in fact, the real author of the drawings or the descriptions 

 in books on Natural History is not so much as mentioned, 

 while the pretended author assumes to himself all the merit 

 which the world is willing to allow him. This want of can- 

 dour I never could endure. On the contrary, I feel pleasm-e 

 in here acknowledging the assistance which I have received from 

 a friend, Mr William Macgillivkay, who being possessed 

 of a liberal education and a strong taste for the study of the 

 Natvnal Sciences, has aided m.e, not in drawing the figures of 



