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ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY,

OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE

BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA;

ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED
IN THE WORK ENTITLED

THE BIRDS OF AMERICA,

AND INTERSPERSED WITH DELINEATIONS OF AMERICAN
SCENERY AND MANNERS.

BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, F. R. SS. L. & E.

FELLOW OF THE LINNEAN AND ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETIES OF LONDON; MEMBER OF THE LY-
CEUM AND LINNEAN SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF
PARIS, THE WERNERIAN NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH; HONORARY MEM-
BER OF THE SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY OF MANCHESTER, AND OF THE SCOTTISH
ACADEMY OF PAINTING, ARCHITECTURE, AND SCULPTURE; MEMBER OF THE PHILOSOPHI-
CAL SOCIETIES OF CAMBRIDGE, LIVERPOOL, AND NEW-CASTLE-UPON-TYNE, ETC. ETC.

Philadelphia:

E. L. CAREY AND A. HART-CHESNUT STREET.

MDCCCXXXII.

Entered, according to the act of congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-one, by R. Harlan, M.D. in the clerk's office of the District Court of the
United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS.

KIND READER,-Should you derive from the perusal of the following pages, which I have written with no other wish than that of procuring one favourable thought from you, a portion of the pleasure which I have felt in collecting the materials for their composition, my gratification will be ample, and the compensation for all my labours will be more than, perhaps, I have a right to expect from an individual to whom I am as yet unknown, and to whom I must, therefore, in the very outset, present some account of my life, and of the motives which have influenced me in thus bringing him into contact with an American Woodsman.

I received life and light in the New World. When I had hardly yet learned to walk, and to articulate those first words always so endearing to parents, the productions of Nature that lay spread all around, were constantly pointed out to me. They soon became my playmates; and before my ideas were sufficiently formed to enable me to estimate the difference between the azure tints of the sky, and the emerald hue of the bright foliage, I felt that an intimacy