Prefa ce. 
F or many years we have been of opinion that a work on Nests axd 
Eggs, in life-like colors, would be a valuable acquisition to ornitho- 
logical science, and meet a want that has long been felt to exist. After 
vainly hoping that some more comp)etent j^erson than the writer would see 
the necessity therefor, and take a step in the right direction, we were be- 
ginning to despair of any such enterprise being undertaken, when, to our 
surprise, two publications, partially of this character, loomed up in the 
literary horizon, one hailing from Ohio, and the other from New England. 
The former, a local jDublication, seemed of such high pecuniary value as 
to be beyond the public reach; while the latter, fully up to it in merit of 
learning, but illustrating merely tbe eggs, was destined to failure from the 
first, and, after running a brief career, has at last ceased to exist. Under 
these circumstances we embarked in the project, in the confident expecta- 
tion that our ornithological friends and others would give us encouraging 
sujjport. 
The utter impracticability and, we may say, impossibility of any 
scheme looking to the delineations of all the nests built by the many 
hundred birds belonging to our country, in the small space of a single 
volume, was obvious at the outset. All that we could j^rouiise our con- 
science were the figures of representative forms, and this we have kept in 
