IV 
PREFACE. 
By all the land birds of the United States, we must be under¬ 
stood to mean those we have personally ascertained. While 
discoveries are daily making in the Ornithology of Europe, nay 
even among the feathered tribes of the island of Great Britain, 
whose limited extent, peculiar situation, and high degree of 
civilization, ought to have long since rendered her productions 
thoroughly known, it would be highly presumptuous to imagine 
that no bird remained to be discovered in a country embracing 
such a vast extent of unexplored territory as this. Mr. J. J. 
Audubon, painter-naturalist, who has devoted twenty years of 
his life to studying nature in the forests of the West, has gratified 
us with the sight of several drawings of new species which will 
appear among the plates he is now engaged in publishing. It 
is greatly to be wished, for the advancement of American Orni¬ 
thology, that while his work, so magnificent, but necessarily so 
slow in coming forth, is preparing, a scientific abstract of his 
discoveries should be drawn up without delay. 
Besides the new discoveries that may be daily expected, many 
known species will probably hereafter be found entitled to enter 
the Fauna of these states. They may be arranged in two classes, 
of which the first will comprise those already well known to 
inhabit the more northern regions of America, and which may 
at some future period be ascertained to extend their range within 
our limits: these are all common to both continents; as instances 
we may adduce Loxia pytiopsittcicus, Saxicola cenanthe, Tetrao 
albus, and T. lagopus, &c. Already in the present volume their 
companions, Emberiza lapponica and Picus tridactylus , take their 
station, for the first time, among the birds of the United States. 
The other class will include those tropical American birds 
which in all probability visit, either occasionally or at regular 
periods, the southern borders of Florida and Louisiana, thus 
entitling them to a place in this work. The Falco dispar , and 
