viii PKEFACE. 



names accompany their conuimnications, have also coutri- 

 buted to the work. I must not omit to mention again, with 

 very kindly feelings, the late Mr. Carfrae, and Mr. Fenton, 

 taxidermists in Edinburgh, who, besides giving me intima- 

 tion of everything rare or remarkable that came to them, also 

 supplied me abundantly with bodies for dissection. Lastly, 

 to Professor Jameson I am greatly indebted for the liberality 

 with which he laid open to my inspection the valuable mate- 

 rials contained in the beautiful Museum of the University of 

 Edinburgh, of which he has long been a distinguished orna- 

 ment ; and to Mr. Pengelly and Dr. Battersby, of Torquay, 

 who furnished me with every fiicility for examining the 

 excellent collection of the Birds of Devonshire, contained in 

 the little Museum of the Natural History Society there. 



Were it necessary, or likely to be useful, I should not 

 hesitate to review these five volumes. I merely commend 

 them to the public, for whom they have been written, and 

 who will, in due time, discover their errors as well as accura- 

 cies. He who professes the greatest contempt for public 

 opinion is always the most anxious for general applause. I 

 should, no doubt, be very well pleased to be commended ; 

 but I do not now anticipate great distress from the most 

 virulent censure. It is impossible to write a History of 

 British Birds that shall please all, nor is it probable that any 

 man in Britain possesses the knowledge necessary to produce 

 a work of this kind making a very marked approach toward 

 perfection. Accordingly, each of our many ornithologists, 

 real and pretended, has a method of his own, one confining 

 himself to short technical descriptions as most useful to stu- 

 dents, another detailing more especially the habits of the 

 birds, as more amusing to general readers, a third viewing 

 them in relation to human feelings and passions, a fourth 

 converting science into romance, and giving no key to the dis- 

 crimination of the species, bringing his little knowledge of the 

 phenomena under the dominion of imagination, and copiously 

 intermingling his patch-work of truth and error with scraps 

 of poetry. The plan of this work is very different from that 

 of any of these, and is not by any means calculated to amuse 

 the reader who desires nothing more than pleasant anecdotes, 



