8 
INTRODUCTION. 
years of application are necessary to enable a person, Avliatcver may be 
his talents or diligence, to handle the graver with the facility and effect 
of the pencil ; while the time, thus consumed, might be more advanta- 
geously employed in finishing drawings, and collecting facts for the de- 
scriptive parts, which is the proper province of the Ornithologist. Every 
person who is acquainted Avith the extreme accuracy of eminent engra- 
vers, must likewise be sensible of the advantage of having the imper- 
fections of the pencil corrected by the excellence of the graver. Every 
improvement of this kind the author has studiously availed himself of; 
and has frequently furnished the artist with the living or newly-killed 
subject itself to assist his ideas. 
In coloring the impressions, the same scrupulous attention has been 
paid to imitate the true tints of the original. The greatest number of the 
descriptions, particularly those of the nests, eggs, and plumage, have been 
written in the woods, Avith the subjects in view, leaving as little as possi- 
ble to the lapse of recollection : as to what relates to the manners, 
habits, &c., of the birds, the particulars on these heads are the result of 
personal observation, from memoranda taken on the spot ; if they differ, 
as they will in many points, from former accounts, this at least can be 
said in their behalf, that a single fact has not been advanced which the 
writer was not himself witness to, or received from those on whose judg- 
ment 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 labors of his prede- 
cessors 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 con- 
tains the names of one hundred and nine species, with the designations of 
Linnaeus and Catesby, and references to Buffon. The next, and by far 
the most complete that has yet appeared, was published in 1791, by 
Mr. William Bartram, in his Travels through North and South Caro- 
lina," &c., in vthich two hundred and fifteen different species are enume- 
rated, and concise descriptions and characteristics of each added, in Latin 
and English. Dr. Barton, in his " Fragments of the Natural History of 
Pennsylvania," has favored us with a number of remarks on this sub- 
