PREFACE. 5 



sufficient to guide the beginner as to the place where the description of any particular species 

 may be found. 



After the book is published, and if the circulation it attains appears to warrant it, coloured 

 illustrations will be published in continuation. 



No pains have been spared to render this hand-book as complete as possible : and, in 

 judging of the result, we trust that the public will remember the difficulties under which 

 works of this nature are necessarily undertaken in this country : and that the compilation has 

 been carried on, not in the quiet and leisure of a studio, but in the intervals of a busy official 

 life. 



