Throughout our transcription of Birds and Trees of North America, we have made minimal changes to Rex’s original text. Our rule of thumb has been to make only changes that Rex would have made had he been able to review and correct the final volumes.
We have retained Rex’s original spellings, however idiosyncratic. He used a phonetic shorthand for a number of common words (“tho” for “though” and “thot” for “thought,” for example) as well as for certain nouns (“nabor” for “neighbor”) and verbs (“dropt” for “dropped”). We have corrected only spellings that were clearly the result of typographical errors, which are few and far between given the length and complexity of the text in the twelve volumes. We have retained his original punctuation except in cases where a mark of punctuation is clearly missing or mistakenly repeated.
We have corrected geographical place names when they contain a clear typographical error, but not when Rex’s usage reflects an older spelling in usage a century ago.
As for Rex’s use of taxonomy, we refer you to the “thoro” explanation of same in our March 2026 newsletter.