HISTORICAL PREFACE. 



Were a modern Hesiod to essay — neither a cos- 

 mogony nor a theogony — but the genesis of even the 

 least department of human knowledge, — were he to 

 seek the beginnings of American Ornithology, he wo\ild 

 find it only in Chaos. For from this sprang all things, 

 i^ jt (Mt^SH^I^^L^ great and small alike, 



to pass through Night 

 and Nemesis to the 

 light of days which 

 first see orderly pro- 

 gress in the course 

 of natural evolution, 

 when is first estab- 

 hshed some sequence 

 of events we recognize 

 as causes and effects. 

 Then there is system, 

 and formal law ; there 

 science becomes possi- 

 ble ; there its possible 

 history begins. 



Long was the time 

 J during which the birds 

 I"' of our country were 

 known to its inhab- 

 itants, after the fash- 

 ion of the people of 

 those days, — known 

 as things of which use 

 could be made, and 

 studied, too, that use 

 might be made of them. 

 But this period is pre- 

 historic; no evidence 



remains, save in some quaint pictograph or rudely graven image. There followed a 

 period shorter by far than the former one, though it endures to-day — when the same 



