SWAINSON’S SWAMP-WARBLER. 
83 
upper scutella blended ; toes slender ; claws rather long, moderately arched, 
slender, much compressed, laterally grooved, extremely acute ; plumage soft 
and blended. Bristles obsolete. Wings rather long, somewhat pointed, the 
outer three nearly equal, the second longest. Tail of moderate length, nearly 
even. — Name from, "EAa? a swamp, and n to inhabit. 
SWAINSON’S SWAMP-WARBLER. 
Helinaia Swainsonii, And. 
PLATE CIV.— Male. 
Shortly after the death of Wilson, one of the wise men of a certain city in 
the United States, .assured the members of a Natural History Society there, 
that no more birds would be found in the country than had been described 
by that justly celebrated writer. Had the assertion. however been made in 
the hearing of that ornithologist, he would doubtless at once have refuted the 
speech of this extraordinary orator, who continued as follows : — “ No more 
Finches, no more Hawks, no more Owls, no more Herons, and certainly no 
more Pigeons ; and as to Water birds, let the list given by Wilson of such 
as he has not described be filled, and again I say, there will end the American 
Ornithology.” The author has travelled much, having gone a few miles to 
the eastward of his own city, and even crossed the Mississippi ; but, as he 
had predicted, he never discovered a bird in all his wanderings. Time 
passed on, and the orator has dreamed over it ; but several industrious 
students of nature, doubting if all that he had said might really be strictly 
correct to the letter, have followed in the track of Wilson, have extended 
their investigations, ransacked the deep recesses of the forests and the great 
western plains, visited the shores of the Atlantic, ascended our noble streams, 
and explored our broadest lakes ; — and, reader, they have found more new 
birds than the learned academician probably knew of old ones. Then, be 
not surprised when I assure you. that our Bonapartes, our Nuttalls; our 
Bachmans, our Coopers, Pickerings, Townsends, Peales, and other 
zealous naturalists, have very considerably augmented the Fauna of the 
United States. To the list of these amiable men may be added the names of 
learned and enterprising Europeans — Parry, Franklin, Richardson ,Ross» 
