INTRODUCTION. 3 
In 1857, Salvin made a birds’-nesting expedition with the Rev. H. B. Tristram and 
Mr. W. EH. Simpson (afterwards Huddleston) through Tunisia and Eastern Algeria, in 
which I was to have joined them, but an accident in the hunting-field laid me up 
for some weeks and prevented me from accompanying them. ‘The result of this five 
months’ journey forms the subject of two valuable papers, one by Salvin, the other by 
Tristram, published in the first volume of ‘The Ibis.’ Later in the year, when I had 
sufficiently recovered from my accident, I went with my brother Percy to Bodé, in 
the north of Norway ; there we remained for some weeks exploring the surrounding 
country and were fortunate enough to meet with and secure the eggs of the Great 
Snipe (Scolopax gallinago). Taking the steamer northward to the Alten River, we 
crossed Lapland on foot to Haparanda, on the Gulf of Bothnia, paying John Wolley a 
short visit at Muonioniska. Before returning home we visited Stockholm, St. Peters- 
burg, and Nijnei-Novgorod. A short paper on the birds obtained on this journey 
appeared in ‘The Ibis’ for 1861. 
In the autumn of 1857 Salvin paid his first visit to Central America, in company 
with Mr. George Ure Skinner, a gentleman well known to both Botanists and 
Ornithologists through the collections of crchids and birds he had brought from that 
country on previous expeditions. Salvin undertook the journey, at the request of 
Messrs. Price & Co., to examine and report upon the nuts of a palm which it was 
thought might be used in the manufacture of candles. ‘The palm-nuts, however, 
proved to be useless for practical purposes, and Salvin spent the remainder of his time 
in travelling through the country and making a collection of birds and insects. He 
reached Belize, British Honduras, in December 1857, and after spending a few days 
there, proceeded down the coast to Yzabal and thence by easy stages to Guatemala City, 
making Duenas, 3U miles south-west of the capital, his headquarters for six months. 
Salvin made two excursions to the Pacific coast region and one to the Lake of Atitlan 
in the ‘Altos.’ Leaving the country towards the end of June 1898, he returned to 
England vid San José and Panama. On his return he published a paper in ‘ The Ibis,’ 
in conjunction with Mr. P. L. Sclater, on the Ornithology of Central America (not 
including Mexico), in which the authors enumerated 381 birds, all that were then 
known to inhabit that country. 
What he saw, however, on this expedition so whetted his appetite that he returned 
again to Guatemala in the spring of 1859, with the sole object of studying Natural 
History. He revisited Duefias, and collected in the neighbourhood for some months. 
In October he went to San Gerdénimo, Coban, and other places in Vera Paz, returning 
to Duefias about the end of the year. In March 1860, he was again in Aita Vera 
Paz, at Coban, Lanquin, &c., and left for home, wd Belize, in the following month. 
On this occasion he added very considerably to his collection of birds, as well as 
insects, and as a result wrote various papers in ‘The Ibis’ for 1860 on his 
discoveries. 
B2 
