VI PREFACE. 



useful books and lists of the birds of various districts of Great 

 Britain have been published during recent years, that it ought 

 now to be possible to gather together the threads and publish 

 a useful volume on the geographical distribution of our native 

 birds. 



3. The migration of birds in Great Britain. Much has been 

 done during the past few years to improve our knowledge of 

 this phenomenon, but the material is still rough and undigested, 

 and many of the conclusions published are merely conjectural. 



4. The formation of local collections by the Museums of the 

 capital towns of each county, which shall serve to illustrate its 

 Avi-fauna, and exDlain the distribution of every bird within its 

 limits 



It wouM thus be possible to obtain an ornithological census 

 of the British Avi-fauna, a work which is much needed in the 

 present day. 



One word with regard to the nomenclature of the present 

 volume. I have employed such names as I believe will 

 ultimately be found to be the correct ones for the species when 

 an International Congress of Ornithologists determines to settle 

 what shall be the proper scientific designations of European 

 birds. At present there is considerable confusion in the 

 nomenclature of our British species, the names of the " List " 

 published by the British Ornithologists' Union being by no 

 means acceptable to some of us at the present day, and differ- 

 ing in many instances from those employed by American and 

 German Naturalists. Then again, Mr. Secbohm employed the 

 simple method of adopting the name most in vogue since the 

 time of Linnaeus, or, as he called it, auctorum plurimorum. He 

 was also an advocate of trinomials — such as Parus ater brittanni- 

 cus for the Eng ish Coal-Tit, — an arrangement I shall never 

 adopt, as I consider it a clumsy and unnecessary method of 

 nomenclature, and one that in the hands of unscrupulous 



