WESTERN WILD SPORTS. 
195 
mentioned this bird in his American Ornithology, although it is 
impossible to conceive that he was ignorant of its existence, any 
more than that of the Wild Swan —Gy gnus Americanus —the 
latter bird especially frequenting the waters adjacent to Balti¬ 
more, where he resided, and the former, 1 imagine, being in 
his day even more than at present, a common article of sale in 
the markets of that city. 
“ Despite, however, his eloquence and ability as a writer, and 
his acuteness and general accuracy as an observer of nature, it 
appears to me that Mr. Wilson was in no respect a man of 
system. He seems to have jotted down his notes concerning 
every new bird, or species, as he met it; to have thrown them 
pellmell into his portfolio, and thereafter taken them out in a 
lump and published them without arrangement certainly, and 
perhaps without much revision. It appears to me that a care¬ 
fully revised edition of Wilson’s Ornithology, systematically 
arranged, completed to the latest modern discoveries, and am¬ 
plified with copious notes, is one of the desiderata of the litera¬ 
ture of the day. This book, as it now exists, being so contused 
in method, and so incomplete, as to afford a very imperfect idea 
of the Ornithology of America, while the great and splendid 
works of Bonaparte and Audubon are so costly as to be almost 
entirely beyond the reach of the ordinary purchaser. 
The following description of our bird is from the Birds of 
America by Mr. Audubon. Of its manners, haunts, and habits, 
I shall speak more at large when I come to treat of it as an 
object of pursuit as game. 
“Male, 49.68. Female, 37.54. 
“ Breeds from Texas to Massachusetts and Vermont. In the 
interior to the Missouri, and thence northward to Michigan. 
Common, resident, though removing considerable distances in 
autumn in pursuit of food. 
“ Bill shortish, robust, slightly arched, rather obtuse, the base 
covered by a bare membrane ; upper mandible with dorsal out¬ 
line arched, the sides convex, the edges overlapping, the tip a 
little declinate; under mandible somewhat bulging toward the 
