XVI 



Preface 



On the other hand, to the sportsman the book will, no doubt, appeal, 

 since the author, himself an ardent sportsman and an excellent shot, offers 

 much that is not onl}' of interest, but also of practical importance, in his 

 remarks upon British game-birds and wild-fowl. It is, indeed, difficult to 

 determine whether his dominant passion was for natural history or for sport, 

 since both of these pursuits seem to have had an equal interest for him, and 

 each balanced and supplemented the other admirably. He was a thorough 

 sportsman-naturalist of the best type, eager to weigh carefully the facts 

 which he noted and to arrive at his deductions after a critical evaluation 

 of the evidence. 



Mr. Ogilvie's collection of British birds, beautifully mounted, carefully 

 catalogued and formerly arranged in the Museum specially built at his home 

 at Sizewell, on the Suffolk coast, has been presented by his widow to the 

 Ipswich Museum, a fitting home, since the greater number of his specimens 

 were collected in Suffolk. The collection certainly rivals the famous Booth 

 collection at Brighton, to which it is little, if at all, inferior. The extensive 

 series of British bird-skins were, at my suggestion, presented to the British 

 Museum, where they will form, I understand, the nucleus of a special British 

 collection of skins. Mr. Ogilvie had brought together a very fine library of 

 ornithological works, and had spared no expense in surrounding himself 

 with a suitable literary environment for the study of his favoiu'ite subject. 

 At the time of his death he was engaged upon an important ornithological 

 work, which, I fear, will never now be published. 



In preparing this book for the press, I have received help from various 

 sources, and desire to acknowledge this most gratefully. Firstly, I have 

 to thank Mrs. Ogilvie for having so readily agreed to my suggestion that the 

 lectures should be made accessible to the public, for lending me the MS. 

 and photographs, and for undertaking the expenses of publication. To 

 Mr. Donald Gunn I owe very cordial thanks for his sympathetic interest in 

 the work, and for valuable assistance. He not only assisted me materially 

 in adapting the MS., but to him I owe the best of the illustrations in the text. 

 My wife, too, has co-operated in a variety of ways. In compiling the regret- 

 ably short bibliography of Mr. Ogilvie's publications, I have benefited b}- 

 kindly help from Mr. F. Martin Duncan, the Librarian of the Zoological 

 Society, and from Mr. J. E. Harting, the well-known ornithologist. Mr. T. A. 

 Morley, of Thorpeness, was good enough to supply me with information 

 as to the alterations which have resulted in the draining of Thorpe Mere, 

 operations which, alas ! have almost completely spoilt (from the bird-lover's 

 point of view) what was, up to a few j'ears ago, a regular ornithologist's 

 paradise. The Mere was certainly one of Mr. Ogilvie's happiest hunting- 

 grounds. To Mrs. Massey we owe the Foreword dealing with her brother's 

 life and personality. The volume is published as a tribute to the memory 

 of one whose death involved a great loss to ornithological science and to 

 those of his friends who were privileged to know him at all intimately. 



HENRY BALFOUR. 

 Oxford, 1920. 



