4 PREFACE. 



the country. I now became assistant and secretary to the 

 learned Professor of Natural History in the University 

 of Edinburgh, under whom I took charge of an exten- 

 sive and beautiful museum, in which I found occasional 

 opportunities of making myself in some degree ac- 

 quainted with objects which I might not otherwise have 

 been able to examine. The late Mr Wilson, Janitor 

 of the University, who dealt extensively in birds, also 

 allowed me to examine the specimens that passed 

 through his hands. After remaining several years in 

 this place, I thought it expedient to retire ; and con- 

 tinued my observations in the fields, supporting myself 

 by my labour in the closet. In 1830 I became a can- 

 didate for the Conservatorship of the Museum of the 

 College of Surgeons, which, somehow, without my be- 

 ing acquainted with three members of that learned and 

 most respectable body, and without soliciting the vote 

 of one individual, I unexpectedly obtained, and of 

 which I continue to discharge the duties, not neglecting 

 the opportunities of improving my anatomical know- 

 ledge afforded by the numerous skeletons of birds and 

 other animals in that valuable collection. During the 

 whole of this time, excepting about a year, when hope 

 seemed almost to have deserted me, and when I had 

 resolved simply to go through the drudgery of my 

 duty, I have been more or less attached to the study of 

 Ornithology. I have shot, examined, described, and 

 depicted, a very considerable number of our native 



