xxvi INTRODUCTION 



done, and sometimes with the best results. In 

 cases where this could not be effected, the name 

 of the recorder may often be taken as a sufficient 

 guarantee for the genuineness of the record ; and 

 it would be obviously unfair to omit all mention 

 of a report because the truth of it could not now 

 be satisfactorily ascertained. Further than this, it 

 has been deemed more prudent to notice erroneous 

 reports for the sake of showing them to be so, than 

 to incur a risk of being supposed to have overlooked 

 them by omitting all allusion to their existence. 



It has been already stated that in order not to 

 extend the limits of this book unreasonably by 

 going over ground which has been already well 

 worked, many details as to haunts and habits have 

 been purposely omitted. Nevertheless, in a search 

 for what has been really required, it has frequently 

 happened that important essays and short notices 

 of a valuable nature have been met with ; and to 

 preserve a note of these for future reference has 

 appeared almost as desirable as to index the records 

 of rare visitants. On this account therefore, and 

 especially when they have not been alluded to in 

 the standard works before mentioned, a brief re- 

 ference to volume and page has been given, the 

 object being to save time and trouble to the reader 

 by referring him direct to valuable sources of infor- 

 mation which might otherwise be unknown or 

 overlooked. 



In bringing this Introduction to a close, I 



