INTRODUCTION. xv 



cise description of the rarer species especially should 

 enable the fortunate possessor of the volume to 

 identify any rare or strange fowl that may come in 

 his way. 



From his childhood, Mr. Duncan has always taken 

 great interest in bird-life ; and this seems only 

 natural, for he is the son of Robert Duncan, the 

 Newcastle taxidermist, and was consequently brought 

 up in an ornithological atmosphere, and in a house 

 where the family talk was almost invariably about 

 birds. At the age of fourteen John Duncan was 

 apprenticed to William Wailes, the well-know^n eccle- 

 siastical glass painter, with whom, and with Messrs. 

 Wailes & Strang, he has worked for nearly forty 

 years. During the early portion of that time John 

 Duncan studied drawing under William Bell Scott, 

 almost as famous as a poet as an artist. John 

 Duncan became skilled in the art of painting on 

 glass, and many noble church windows, both in the 

 United Kingdom and in America, remain lasting 

 monuments to his talent in this direction. During 

 these years John Duncan was devoting all his spare 

 time to the study of birds, frequently accompan}- 

 ing his father on his ornithological excursions, and 

 gradually acquiring that knowledge which we feel 

 must have stood him in good stead during his work 

 upon the present volume. Whilst in his teens, young 

 Duncan made many drawings of birds in oil and in 

 water-colours, and from that time to the present his 



