PREFACE 



of his researches. I also believe that in publishing my 

 observations within the compass of a single volume, I am 

 filling a want long felt by field naturalists, who have hitherto 

 only been able to obtain any information respecting our 

 rarer birds from large and costly works on British Ornithology. 

 In maldng my selection of our rarer birds from the four 

 hundred species which are regarded as British, I have used 

 every care, weighing impartially the claims of each to bie so 

 considered. " Our Piarer Birds," so far as the purposes of 

 the work before us are concerned, are species that cannot be 

 met with everywhere, like the Eobin and the Thrush, the 

 Sparrow and the Swallow ; and in addition I have laid it 

 down as a sine qiia non that each must breed within the con- 

 fines of the British Islands. In this I follow^ the ornithological 

 axiom that a bird's breeding-place is its true home. Exception 

 has only been made in the case of the Knot ; and I am pleased 

 to see that the Snow Bunting's nest has been actually obtained 

 in Sutherlandshire, at an elevation of nearly three thousand 

 feet. The classification I have adopted is what seems to 

 me the most natural, although the many gaps in my list of 

 species, which only a selection of British birds necessarily 

 entails, breaks much of the proper order of sequence. Probably 

 the classification of birds is as far from a definite and natural 

 settlement as ever it was, no two authorities agreeing in 

 their ideas as to the relative value of anatomical characters. 

 Where doctors disagree so wofuUy, it is not possible within 

 the restrictions of space here laid down either to discuss the 

 pros and cons of scientific arrangement, or to become re- 

 sponsible for any new departure. This work is written 

 for the lover of birds, not for the student of their pedigree 

 or the quibbler over their classification. 



