IV 
PREFACE. 
It is thus that, by studying the living manners of the differ- 
ent tribes in tlieir native retreats, we not only reconcile the singu- 
larity of some parts of their conformation with divine wisdom j 
but are enabled to comprehend the reason of many others, which 
tlie pride of certain closet naturalists has arraigned as defective or 
deformed. 
One observation more may be added : the migrations of this 
class of birds are more generally known and acknowledged than 
that of most others. Their comparatively large size and immense 
multitudes, render their regular periods of migration (so strenuous- 
ly denied to some others) notorious along the whole extent of our 
seacoast. Associating, feeding, and travelling together in such 
prodigious and noisy numbers, it would be no less difl&cult to con- 
ceal their arrival, passage and departure, than that of a vast army 
through a thickly peopled country. Constituting also, as many of 
them do, an article of food and interest to man, he naturally be- 
comes more intimately acquainted with theii*' habits and retreats, 
than with those feeble and minute kinds, which offer no such induce- 
ment, and perform their migrations with more silence, in scattered 
parties, unheeded or overlooked. Hence many of the Waders can 
be traced from their summer abodes, the desolate regions of Green- 
land and Spitzbergen, to the fens and seashores of the West India 
islands and South America, the usual places of their winter retreat, 
while those of the Purple Martin and common Swallow still re- 
main, in vulgar belief, wrapt up in all the darkness of mystery. 
The figures in the i)lates which accompany this volume have 
been generally reduced to one half the dimensions of the living 
