Excerpt from Manual of North American Birds For those who are already familiar with the use of analytical keys in works on natural history such instructions would of course be quite super uous; but as some who possess the book may not have had pre vions experience with such keys, the following directions are given for their benefit: In the first place, it may be stated that the principle upon which the keys are constructed is that of dichotomous antithesis. That is, each character tested must conform to one or another phrase, there being only one alternative. Therefore, if the characters mentioned after a1 do not fit the bird in hand, everything following must be ignored until a2 is reached. Having found that the bird belongs to a1 or a2, as the case may be, then the immediately following 6' is to be tested, and so on until the ultimate division is reached and the bird identified. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Excerpt from A Check List of North American Birds The List contains a very few species discovered since the Key was printed; otherwise, it is an exact reflection of that work, the arrangement and nomenclature being identical. The numbers of the genera as used in the Key are given in the head lines of the List in order to facilitate reference. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Check-List of North American Birds HE first edition of this check-list of North American Birds was published in and the second (revised) in The preparation of the present (third) edition was authorized at a Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union held in New York City, November 13 - 16, 1905, the work being assigned to the Committee on Nomenclature and Classification of North American Birds. Another Committee was at the same time appointed to make a critical examina tion of the A. O. U. Code of Nomenclature, with a view to amending some of its provisions, should such revision seem desirable. This Committee, after prolonged consideration of the subject, made its report, which was adopted by the Council of the Union, and a small edition of the revised Code was issued in July, The 'new Code' is thus the basis of the nomenclatura] rulings of the present check-list. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.