vi PREFACE. 



ject; he has examined their pages with an eager and inquisitive 

 eye; but his researches in that quarter have been but too frequently 

 repaid with disappointment, and often with disgust. On the sub- 

 ject of the manners and migrations of our birds, which in fact con- 

 stitute almost the only instructive and interesting parts of their his- 

 tory, all is a barren and a dreary waste. A few vague and formal 

 particulars of their size, specific marks, &c. accompanied some- 

 times with figured representations that would seem rather intended 

 to caricature than to illustrate their originals, is all that the greater 

 part of them can boast of. Nor are these the most exceptionable 

 parts of their performances ; the novelty of fable, and the wildness 

 of fanciful theory, are frequently substituted for realities ; and con- 

 jectures instead oi facts called up for their support. Prejudice, as 

 usual, has in numerous instances united with its parent, ignorance, 

 to depreciate and treat with contempt what neither of them under- 

 stood; and the whole interesting assemblage of the feathered tribes 

 of this vast continent, which in richness of plumage, and in strength 

 sweetness and variety of song, will be found to exceed those of any 

 other quarter of the globe, are little known save in the stuffed cabi- 

 nets of the curious, and among the abstruse pages and technical 

 catalogues of dry systematic writers. 



From these barren and musty records, the author of the pre- 

 sent work has a thousand times turned, with a delight bordering on 

 adoration, to the magnificent repository of the woods and fields — 

 the Grand Aviary of Nature. In this divine school he has studied 

 from no vulgar copy; but from the works of the Great Master 

 OF Creation himself; and has read with rapture the lessons of 



