File:Key to North American birds. Containing a concise account of every species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent north of the Mexican and United States boundary, inclusive of (14750909422).jpg

Identifier: keytonorthameric00coue (find matches)
Title: Key to North American birds. Containing a concise account of every species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent north of the Mexican and United States boundary, inclusive of Greenland and lower California, with which are incorporated General ornithology: an outline of the structure and classification of birds; and Field ornithology, a manual of collecting, preparing, and preserving birds
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Coues, Elliott, 1842-1899
Subjects: Birds -- North America Birds -- Collection and preservation
Publisher: Boston, Estes and Lauriat
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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nor a theoguny — but the genesis of even theleast department of human knowledge, — were lie toseek the beginnings of American Ornithology, he wouldfind It only in Chaos. For from this sprang all things, great and small alike,to pass through Nightand Nemesis to thelight of days whichfirst see orderly pro-gress in the courseof natural evolution,when is first estab-lished some sequenceof events we recognizeas causes and effects.Then there is system,and formal law ; therescience becomes possi-ble ; there its possiblehistory begins. Long was the timeduring which the birdsof our country wereknown to its inhab-itants, after the fash-ion of the people ofthose days, — knownas things of which usecould be made, andstudied, too, that usemight be made of them.But this period is pre-historic; no evidencesave in some quaint pictograph or rudely graven image. There followed ashorter by far than the former one, though it endures to-day — when the same
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Xii HISTORICAL PEEFACE. • birds awakened in other men an interest they could not excite in a savage breast, andtlie sense of beauty was felt. Use and Beauty ! What may not spring from such divinelymated pair, when once they brood upon tlie liuman mind, like halcyons stilling troubledwaters, sinking the instincts of the animal in the restful, satisfying reflections of theman ) The history of American Ornithology begins at the time when men first wrote uponAmerican birds; for men write nothing without some reason, and to reason at all is thebeginning of science, even as to reason aright is its end. The date no one can assign,unless it be arbitrarily; it was during tlie latter part of the sixteenth century, which,with the whole of the seventeenth, represents the formative or embryonic period duringwhich were gathering about the germ the crude materials out of which an ornithology ofNorth America was to be fashioned. As these accumulated and were assimilated, — asthe writings multipli

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