208 CONTRIBUTORS TO THE FIRST SERIES OF ' THE IBIs/ 



first began his study of Chinese ornitliology our knowledge 

 of the birds of tliat country may be said to have been 

 almost nothing. No general account of the birds of China 

 had ever been published ; and all that was known of them 

 was of the most fragmentary description. The pages of the 

 * Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society and of this Journal 

 testify to Swinhoe's unremitting energy in his favourite 

 subject. Of all the papers he wrote on it^ the " Revised 

 List of Chinese Birds/^ published in the ' Proceedings ' for 

 1871, gives the best summary of what he did to advance 

 our knowledge of the Chinese avifauna. 



During the latter part of the time that Swinhoe was working' 

 at the birds of the Chinese littoral, the interior of the country 

 was being most ably investigated by Pere Armand David ; so 

 that China^ instead of being the terra incognita as regards 

 our knowledge of its birds that it used to be, began to rank 

 amongst the fairly explored countries of the globe. 



Swinhoe's communications to this Journal commenced in 

 1860, after which scarcely a number, and certainly no volume, 

 appeared without a contribution to its pages from him. His 

 last communication to us bears the date of the same month 

 as that of his death ; and the fine Formosan species there 

 described and figured, from a specimen obtained by Prof. 

 Steere, supplements his own important discoveries in the same 

 island. 



Swinhoe was elected an Honorary Member of the British 

 Ornithologists^ Union in 1862, and passed to the list of 

 Ordinary Members at his own desire in 1876. He was a 

 Member of several of the scientific societies of London, as 

 well as a Fellow of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He was 

 elected a Fellow of the Boyal Society in 1876. 



