8 



INTRODUCTION 



and plumage, have been written in the woods, with the subjects in 

 view, leaving as little as possible to the lapse of recollection: as to 

 what relates to the manners, habits, &c. of the birds, the particu- 

 lars on these heads are the result of personal observation, from me- 

 moranda taken on the spot; if they differ, as they will in many 

 points, from former accounts, this at least can be said in their be- 

 half, that a single fact has not been advanced which the writer was 

 not himself witness to, or received from those on whose judgment 

 and veracity he believed reliance could be placed. When his own 

 stock of observations has been exhausted, and not till then, he has 

 had recourse to what others have said on the same subject, and all 

 the most respectable performances of a similar nature have been 

 consulted, to which access could be obtained; not neglecting the 

 labours of his predecessors in this particular path, Messrs. Catesby 

 and Edwards, whose memories he truly respects. But as a sacred 

 regard to truth requires that the errors or inadvertencies of these 

 authors, as well as of others, should be noticed, and corrected, let 

 it not be imputed to unworthy motives, but to its true cause, a zeal 

 for the promotion of that science, in which these gentlemen so 

 much delighted, and for which they have done so much. 



From the writers of our own country the author has derived 

 but little advantage. The first considerable list of our birds was 

 published in 1787, by Mr. Jefferson, in his celebrated "Notes on 

 Virginia,'' and contains the names of 109 species, with the desig- 

 nations of Linnaeus and Catesby, and references to BufFon. The 

 next, and by far the most complete that has yet appeared, was pub- 

 lished in 1791, by Mr. William Bartram, in his " Travels through 

 North and South Carolina," &c. in which 215 different species are 

 enumerated, and concise descriptions and characteristics of each, 

 added in Latin and English. Dr. Barton, in his " Fragments of 

 the Natural History of Pennsylvania,'' has favoured us with a num- 

 ber of remarks on this subject; and Dr. Belknap, in his "History 

 of New Hampshire," as well as Dr. Williams, in that of Vermont, 



