HISTORICAL PREFACE. xvii 



can ornithology ; " if this designation be apt, then Bartram may be styled its godfather. 

 Few are fully aware how much Wilson owed to Bartram, his " guide, philosopher, and 

 friend," who published in 1791 his "Travels through North and South Carolina," con- 

 taining much ornithological matter that was novel and valuable, including a formal 

 catalogue of the birds of the Eastern United States, in which many species are named 

 as new. I have always contended that those of his names which are identifiable are 

 available, though Bartram frequently lapsed from strict binomial propriety ; and the 

 question furnishes a bone of contention to this day. Many birds which Wilson first 

 fully described and figured were really named by Bartram, and several of the latter's 

 designations were simply adopted by Wilson, who, in relation to Bartram, is as the 

 broader and clearer stream to its principal tributary affluent. The notable " Travels," 

 freighted with its unpretending yet almost portentous bird-matter, went through several 

 editions and at least two translations ; and I consider it the starting-point of a distinctively 

 American school of ornithology. 



We have seen, in several earlier periods, that men's names appear in pairs, if not 

 also as mates. Thus, Catesby and Edwards ; Linnseus and Gmelin ; Pennant and 

 Latham ; and, perhaps, Buffon and Brisson. The Bartramian alter ego is not Wilson, 

 but Barton, whose "Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania," 1799, closed 

 the period which Bartram had opened, and with it the century also. Benjamin Smith 

 Barton's tract, a folio now very scarce, is doubly a " fragment," being at once a work 

 never finished, and very imperfect as far as it went ; but it is one of the most notable 

 special treatises of the last century, and I think the first book published in this country 

 that is entirely devoted to ornithology. But its author's laurels must rest mainly upon 

 this count, for its influence or impression upon the course of events is scarcely to be rec- 

 ognized, — is incomparably less than that made by Bartram's " Travels," and by his 

 mentorship of Wilson. 



By the side of Bartram and Barton stand several lesser figures in the picture of this 

 period. Jeremy Belknap treated the birds of New Hampshire in his " History " of that 

 state (1792). Samuel Williams did like service for those of Vermont in his "History" 

 (1794). Samuel Hearne, a pioneer ornithologist in the northerly parts of America, fore- 

 shadowed, as it were, the much later " Fauna Boreali- Americana " in the narrative of his 

 journey from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean — a stout cpiarto published in 1795. 

 Here a chapter of fifty pages is devoted to about as many species of birds ; and Hearne's 

 observations have a value which " time, the destroyer," has not yet wholly effaced. 



The W^ilsonian Epoch: 1800-1824. 



(1800-1808.) 



The Vieillotian Period. — As we round the turn of the century a great work occupies 

 the opening years, before the appearance of W^ilson, — a work by a foreigner, a French- 

 man, almost unknown to or ignored by his contemporaries in America, although he was 

 already the author of several illustrated works on ornithology when, in 1807, his " Histoire 

 Naturelle des Oiseaux de I'Amerique Septentrionale " was completed in two large folio 

 volumes, containing more than a hundred engravings, with text relating to several hun- 

 dred species of birds of North America and the West Indies ; many of them figured for 



