PREFACE. .'ii 



very different from tliat of Messrs. Hargitt, Seebohm, Salva- 

 dor!, and others, who, in 9^ volumes, have been content with 

 28 new genera, as against his 108." A more manifestly un- 

 fair method of comparison could hardly be conceived, and I 

 wonder at Canon Tristram attempting to prove his point by 

 means of the above figures. Mr. Seebohm worked out the 

 Thrushes and Warblers, a well-worn field, over much of which 

 he had travelled in print, before he wrote Vol. V. of the "Cata- 

 logue." Dr. Gadow's volumes dealt with Faridce, Lcmiidce^ 

 Nectariniidce^ Melipkagtdce, all of which had been much 

 studied and written about before he undertook this portion 

 of the "Catalogue." Captain Shelley, for instance, had just 

 completed a Monograph of the Nectariniidce. The Shrikes 

 and Tits had received much attention from several ornitholo- 

 gists, and Count Salvadori and Dr. Meyer had already swept 

 the board of such new genera as might have fallen to Dr. 

 Gadow's share in the Meliphagidce^ by publishing a number of 

 new genera not long before the latter commenced to work at 

 the "Catalogue." Mr. Salvin's volume consisted mainly of 

 the Humming Birds [Trochilidce), and it is wonderful that he 

 even found one new genus to characterise, seeing that the 

 family had been monographed over and over again, by 

 Gould, Reichenbach, Heine, Mulsant, and worked at by Von 

 Berlepsch, Boucard, and others for years, to say nothing of 

 Mr. Salvin's own previous study of the Family. Mr. Hargitt's 

 four new genera of Woodpeckers were reserved for publication 

 in the "Catalogue," and so were Mr. Ogilvie-Grant's few 

 generic names of Hornbills and Game-Birds, but all these 

 families had been monographed, some of them more than 

 once, before the authors began their " Catalogues," and there- 

 fore the chance of there being any genera which had escaped 

 notice by previous writers was extremely small, and the same 

 may be said of the volumes written by Captain Shelley and 

 Count Salvadori. 



On the other hand, fair play would have demanded an 



