INTRODUCTION. 
Twenty-five or thirty years ago amateur col- 
lectors of birds were rare ; in fact, excepting in the 
immediate vicinity of large cities, individuals who 
spent their leisure time in gathering birds for the 
sole purpose of study, were so seldom met with 
that, when one did occur, his occupation was so 
unusual as to excite the comments of his neigh- 
bors, and he became famous for miles around as 
highly eccentric. Such a man was regarded as 
harmless, but as just a little “ cracked, ” and the 
lower classes gazed at him with open-mouthed 
wonder as he pursued his avocations ; while the 
more educated of his fellows regarded him with a 
kind of placid contempt. I am speaking now of 
the days when the ornithology M America was, so 
to speak, in obscurity; for the brilliant meteor- 
light of the Wilsonian and Audubonian period had 
passed, and the great public quickly forgot that 
the birds and their ways had ever been first in the 
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