Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Google Books Library Project http://www.google.com/books?id=HgA_AAAAYAAJ or through the HathiTrust Digital Library at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015019725202 Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Complicated fractions appear in several places. For example, 3-((7-1/2)/12). This should be read as three and seven and one-half twelfths. This book contains numerous references to numbered Plates. Each plate had one or more illustrations pertinent to the species being discussed. The Plates were published and sold separately and were not included in this book. A SYNOPSIS OF THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA. by JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, F.R.SS. L. & E. Member of Various Scientific Associations in Europe and America. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh; Longman, Rees, Brown, Green, and Longman, London. MDCCCXXXIX. Printed by Neill and Co. Old Fishmarket Edinburgh. PREFACE. I have been induced to present this Volume to the Public by two considerations. The figures and descriptions contained in the works entitled "The Birds of America," and "Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States," having been issued in the miscellaneous manner which was thought best adapted to the occasion, or which was rendered necessary by circumstances, seemed to require a systematic index, in which the nomenclature should be corrected, and the species arranged agreeably to my present views. This Synopsis, then, will afford a methodical catalogue of all the species hitherto discovered in the vast regions, extending from the northern confines of Mexico to the Polar Seas, and which have been described, and, with few exceptions, depicted in the works above named. Another important object has been to present an arrangement of these birds, so characterized, that a person desirous of studying them, might, without much difficulty, be enabled to discover their names, and trace some of the most important features in their organization.