x INTRODUCTORY. 



Acknowledgments. — In many cases, for the purposes 

 of this work, it has been found necessary to abridge articles 

 as they originally appeared. Whenever the language of 

 the author has been preserved throughout, or when slight 

 changes, rendered necessary by the abridgment, only have 

 been made, the author's name has been appended to the 

 article. Where both language and arrangement have been 

 changed to a considerable extent, or when the facts from 

 different authorities have been made into a kind of mosaic, 

 no names in justice could be given. 



It will be seen that several of the articles are credited 

 to the magazines from which they were selected ; in these 

 cases the names of the authors were not given. It must 

 not be thought, however, that our indebtedness to the maga- 

 zines is confined to the few selections directly ascribed to 

 them. A large majority of the articles in the book first 

 made their appearance in some one of the English or 

 American periodicals. Some of these have been collected 

 into books, forming an important part of the literature 

 of the subject, and some of them still remain waifs and 

 estrays. In this country the "Atlantic Monthly," "Har- 

 per's Magazine," and the "Century" have been the me- 

 diums through which much of the best literature of natu- 

 ral history has been given to the public. 



Through the magazines, John Burroughs, at once sci- 

 entific observer and poet, first became known ; and we are 

 sure that the few beautiful extracts which we have made 

 from his essays will lead to a desire for a more general 

 perusal of the volumes which he has published ; and we 

 are equally sure that taste thus developed will be in the 

 direction of purity and refinement, both of thought and 

 diction. The faculty of understanding the language of 

 birds, which Oriental fancy in the Arabian tales ascribed to 

 magical art, seems to have been inborn with Mr. Burroughs, 

 and he, more than any other writer of the present day, may 



