HISTORICAL PBEFACE. 
xvii 
can ornithology ; " if this designation be apt, then Bartram may be styled its godfather. 
Few are fully aware how much Wilson owed to Bartram, his " guide, philosopher, and 
friend," who published in 1791 his "Travels through North and South Carolina," con- 
taining much ornithological matter that was novel and valuable, including a formal 
catalogue of the birds of the Eastern United States, in which many species are named 
as new. I have always contended that those of his names which are identifiable are 
available, though Bartram frequently lapsed from strict binomial propriety ; and the 
(question furnishes a bone of contention to this day. Many birds which Wilson first 
fully described and figured were really named by Bartram, and several of the latter's 
designations were simply adopted by Wilson, who, in relation to Bartram, is as the 
broader and clearer stream to its principal tributary affluent. The notable " Travels," 
freighted with its unpretending yet almost portentous bird-matter, went through several 
editions and at least two translations ; and I consider it the starting-point of a distinctively 
American school of ornithology. 
We have seen, in several earlier periods, that men's names appear in pairs, if not 
also as mates. Thus, Catesby and Edwards ; Linnaeus and Gmelin ; Pennant and 
Latham ; and, perhaps, Buffon and Brisson. The Bartramian alter ego is not Wilson, 
but Barton, whose "Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania," 1799, closed 
the period which Bartram had opened, and with it the century also. Benjamin Smith 
Barton's tract, a folio now very scarce, is doubly a " fragment," being at once a work 
never finished, and very imperfect as far as it went ; but it is one of the most notable 
special treatises of the last century, and I think the first book published in this country 
that is entirely devoted to ornithology. But its author's laurels must rest mainly upon 
this count, for its influence or impression upon the course of events is scarcely to be rec- 
ognized, — is incomparably less than that made by Bartram's " Travels," and by his 
mentorship of Wilson. 
By the side of Bartram and Barton stand several lesser figures in the picture of this 
period. Jeremy Belknap treated the birds of New Hampshire in his ^' History " of that 
state (1792). Samuel W"illiams did like service for those of Vermont in his "History" 
(1794). Samuel Hearne, a pioneer ornithologist in the northerly parts of America, fore- 
shadowed, as it were, the much later "Fauna Boreali- Americana " in the narrative of his 
journey from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean — a stout quarto published in 1795. 
Here a chapter of fifty pages is devoted to about as many species of birds ; and Hearne's 
observations have a value which " time, the destroyer," has not yet wholly effaced. 
The W^ilsonian Epoch: 1800-1824. 
(1800-1808.) 
The Vieillotian Period. — As we round the turn of the century a great work occupies 
the opening years, before the appearance of Wilson, — a work by a foreigner, a French- 
man, almost unknown to or ignored by his contemporaries in America, although he was 
already the author of several illustrated works on ornithology when, in 1807, his " Histoire 
Naturelle des Oiseaux de I'Amerique Septentrional e " was completed in two large folio 
volumes, containing more than a hundred engravings, with text relating to several hun- 
dred species of birds of North America and the West Indies ; many of them figured for 
