NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 133 



Our spring and summer birds of passage continue with us about six months, and are 

 absent about that time. They avail themselves of high and favourable winds, to depart 

 and return. A strong south or southwest wind, about the beginning of April, says Bar- 

 tram, never fails of bringing millions of small birds of passage, who appear very suddenly 

 in spring ; and when the pewit or phebe, (muscicapa fusca,) the first bird of passage which 

 appears in Philadelphia, in the spring, which is generally about the first or middle of 

 March, arrives, then pease, beans, and almost every kind of esculent garden seeds may be 

 planted without danger of frost. 



Bartram distinguishes birds as follows : 



1. Those that arrive in Pennsylvania in the spring, from the south, and return in autumn, 

 after building nests and rearing young. 



2. Those that arrive there from the north, in autumn, where they continue during the 

 winter, and return again in spring, and these birds continue their journey as far south as 

 Florida. 



3. Those that arrive in Carolina and Florida, in the spring, from the south, and breed, 

 and return in autumn without going further north. 



4. Natives of Carolina and Florida, where they breed and continue all the year. 



5. The same of Pennsylvania. 



NOTE W. 



The Rev. Dr. Miller, in his excellent work, entitled A Retrospect of the Eighteenth 

 Century, states, that there are two thousand five hundred and thirty-six species of birds. 

 Latham, in the first six volumes of his Synopsis of Birds, has described ninety-six genera, 

 and two thousand and forty-six species. The additions made in his subsequent volumes 

 have increased the number of species to three thousand. 



The number of birds treated by Linnaeus did not greatly exceed nine hundred. 



There are in Great Britain three hundred and seven species of birds, comprehending 

 all such as either visit that island at uncertain seasons, or are usually domesticated, as 

 well as those which are known to be constant inhabitants, of which one hundred and fifty- 

 four are land birds, and one hundred and fifty-three water birds. 



I think it is not unreasonable to suppose that there are, in the United States and its 

 territories, one thousand species of birds. 



