INTRODUCTION. 
ORNITHOLOGY, to the lover of the beautiful, to him who delights in the gay and bright beings of nature, is one of the most 
attractive of the various branches of natural science. He, who passes through life without a knowledge of the feathered creatures 
constantly surrounding his path in the fields and woods, rendering vocal w r ith bursts of melody the groves and sombre places of the 
forest, pleasing the eye as they flit in dresses of many colors around the habitation, or teaching the much needed lesson of ceaseless 
effort and patient care, as they watch over and provide for, the helpless nestlings, — loses one of the chief means by which his own 
existence might be made more cheerful and contented, and fails to understand one of the most pleasing and attractive of all the 
creations of Omnipotence. 
That person whose life is devoted to agricultural pursuits, and by his ignorance of the habits of his feathered friends, is led to 
a blind, indiscriminate slaughter of the very beings whose instincts teach them to work for his benefit, — probably only learns the error 
he has committed, after failing crops and barren fields prove to him that the death of his little winged help-mates has but given new 
life and vigor to the hurtful grub and destructive insects which have passed over the laud, leaving but a desert behind. 
Investigation of ornithological science has progressed rapidly within the last half century, and much light has been thrown upon 
many difficult and perplexing subjects, encouraging the worker to persevere, although so much still uncomprehended lies beyond. One 
great evidence of progress is, that Ornithologists are more and more turning their attention to the study of the anatomy of their subjects, 
and in the bony structure and formation of the soft parts find truths which no investigation of the outside covering, however minute, 
to which so many confine themselves, can possibly reveal. 
The want of knowledge in that perplexing problem : What constitutes a species ? the seeming impossibility to afford some 
explanation of tins mystery which may be acceptable to all — the apparently hasty manner in many cases, in which birds are described 
as distinct from all those heretofore known — the general shunning of varieties, those unwelcome facts which are met with when least 
expected or desired, bringing to naught some of the most plausible theories — all together warn us that it is best to proceed with 
caution towards our conclusions, lest our labors should be but vanity, our castles only built in the air. 
Of the making of species, even as was said of books, by the Wise man of old, there is no end. 
Every naturalist, although perhaps unable to give a definition of what a species is, which may be acceptable to his fellow-laborers, 
has nevertheless some idea of what may be necessary for an animal to possess in order to occupy such a rank, and completes his own 
work guided, in the majority of cases, from his individual view of the matter. Thus various methods of treating a subject, and much 
confusion, not infrequently arise. 
Genera and species are, in many instances, arbitrary terms, founded at times not so much upon information received, from which 
a decision has been satisfactorily reached, as upon a supposition that allowed an opinion to be hastily formed without a sufficient 
knowledge of the subject having been first attained, to prove that the conclusion arrived at was entirely correct. 
A species may be defined as that being, which has the power of reproducing itself, of transmitting its prominent peculiarities regularly 
to its descendants, and at the same time presenting characters radically distinct from those found elsewhere. 
And although in the majority of instances perhaps, some such idea as that just expressed, has influenced the action of Ornithologists, 
yet however, specimens have been given specific rank, which presented but the slightest variation from well-known forms, and this 
refining process has occasionally been carried to such an extreme, that the merest difference of shade in color has been deemed sufficient 
to constitute a species— nay, a still greater step has been taken, and examples have been described as distinct which so closely resembled 
others, that, should the labels which indicated them, be lost, the describer himself would be unable to distinguish one from the other, 
Such manner of procedure admits of no defense. 
Varieties occur in every class of created beings, and are the result of various causes, usually originating in the parent stock; and 
by seizing upon one of these, which may exhibit only a trifling divergence in form, or color of plumage, from that which has perhaps 
been long known and accepted as a species, and elevating it to a separate rank, the describer at best but anticipates, as a fixed fact, 
a result which the variety, under the most favorable auspices, would have probably been a long period in reaching, and which also 
might never have progressed farther towards a radical difference than was then presented, but might have indeed returned again in its 
descendants to the similitude of the stock from which it sprung. 
Hybridism among birds in a wild state is not infrequently the source from which many varieties arise, and oftentimes these are 
designated as species, their origin not having either been detected, or at least acknowledged. But several causes intervene to prevent the 
long continuance of these forms, one of which is the general infertility of such individuals; or, if in any instance this should not be 
the case, then the inability to keep themselves separated from the allied species from which they derived their existence, would, in a 
few generations, necessarily return these varieties to the likeness of one of the species to which they owed their being. Their individual 
peculiarities would be Swallowed up by one or the other of the dominant races. 
