. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Twenty-five or thirty years ago amateur col- 

 lectors of birds were rare ; in fact, excepting in the 

 immediate vicinity of large cities, individuals who 

 spent their leisure time in gathering birds for the 

 sole purpose of study, were so seldom met with 

 that, when one did occur, his occupation was so 

 unusual as to excite the comments of his. neigh- 

 bors, and he became famous for miles around as 

 highly eccentric. Such a man was regarded as 

 harmless, but as just a little "cracked," and the 

 lower classes gazed at him with open-mouthed 

 wonder as he pursued his avocations ; while the 

 more educated of his fellows regarded him with a 

 kind of placid contempt. I am speaking now of 

 the days when the ornithology of America was, so 

 to speak, in obscurity; for the brilliant meteor- 

 light of the Wilsonian and Audubonian period had 

 passed, and the great public quickly forgot that 

 the birds and their ways had ever been first in the 



