Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/37



to compilers the task of repeating the mass of fabulous and unedifying matter that has been accumulated in the course of ages, respecting this and other remarkable species of birds, and arranging the materials which I have obtained during years of laborious but gratifying observation, I now resume my attempts to delineate the manners of the feathered denizens of our American woods and plains. In treating of the birds represented in the Second Volume of my Plates, as I have done with respect to those of the First, I will confine myself to the particulars which I have been able to gather in the course of a life chiefly spent in studying the birds of my native land, where I have had abundant opportunities of contemplating their manners, and of admiring the manifestations of the glorious perfections of their Omnipotent Creator.

There, amid the tall grass of the far-extended prairies of the West, in the solemn forests of the North, on the heights of the midland mountains, by the shores of the boundless ocean, and on the bosom of the vast lakes and magnificent rivers, have I sought to search out the things which have been hidden since the creation of this wondrous world, or seen only by the naked Indian, who has, for unknown ages, dwelt in the gorgeous but melancholy wilderness. Who is the stranger to my own dear country that can form an adequate conception of the extent of its primeval woods,—of the glory of those columnar trunks, that for centuries have waved in the breeze, and resisted the shock of the tempest,—of the vast bays of our Atlantic coasts, replenished by thousands of streams, differing in