Excerpt from 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 The train of incidents which resulted in what may be called a nomenclatural explosion was fired at the founding of the American Ornithologists' Union at New York, 'in September, 1883. As one of three persons who brought that happy episode upon an unsuspecting bird-world. Which nevertheless greeted their stroke with acclamation, the author must plead a modesty act in bar of trial of his pen on that particular count. But as the honor was his of presiding over the first Congress of the Union, whilst the ideas of its founders were shapen in to a permanent and world-wide organization, so also it fell to his lot to appoint several committees for the despatch of business the Union at once took in hand; and of one of these he has to speak here. This particular wheel within other wheels turned upon a resolution of the Union that the Chairman appoint a committee of five, including himself, to whom Shall be referred the question of a revision of the Classification and Nomenclature of the Birds of North America. Having accepted the situation, the author held with his esteemed colleagues many sessions of the Committee in Washington and New York, and in April, 1885, Offered to the Union the result of much joint labor. The report of the Committee being accepted, it was ordered to be printed, and it appeared in 1886 in an octavo volume of 400 pages, entitled The Code of Nomenclature and Check-list of North American Birds, adopted by the American Ornithologists' Union, etc. 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.