PREFACE. vii 



his wisdom, his goodness and his love, in the conformation, the ha- 

 bitudes, melody and migrations of this beautiful portion of the work 

 of his hands. To communicate as correct ideas of these as his 

 feeble powers were capable of, and thus, from objects, that, in our 

 rural walks almost every where present themselves, to deduce not 

 only amusement and instruction, but the highest incitements to vir- 

 tue and piety, have been the author^s most anxious and ardent wish. 

 On many of his subjects, indeed, it has not been in his power to 

 say much. The recent discovery of some, and the solitary and se- 

 cluded habits of others, have opposed great obstacles to his endea- 

 vours in this respect. But a time is approaching when these ob- 

 stacles will no longer exist. When the population of this immense 

 western Republic will have diffused itself over every acre of ground 

 fit for the comfortable habitation of man — when farms, villages, 

 towns and glittering cities, thick as the stars in a winter's evening, 

 overspread the face of our beloved country, and every hill, valley 

 and stream has its favorite name, its native flocks and rural inha- 

 bitants ; then, not a warbler shall flit through our thickets but its 

 name, its notes and habits will be familiar to all; repeated in their 

 sayings, and celebrated in their village songs. At that happy pe- 

 riod, should any vestige or memory of the present publication exist, 

 be it known to our more enlightened posterity, as some apology for 

 the deficiencies of its author, that in the period in which he wrote 

 three-fourths of our feathered tribes were altogether unknown even 

 to the proprietors of the woods which they frequented — that with- 

 out patron, fortune or recompence, he brought the greater part of 

 these from the obscurity of ages, gave to each " a local habitation 



