iv editor's note. 



without a moment's delay. The third and last volume is also 

 in the press^ and will be published before I leave England 

 next month. I have had little time to investigate the 

 synonymy of those groups of Indian birds contained in the 

 third, and portion of the second, volume of this work, and 

 which would in the ordinary course of events have appeared 

 in the Manual on the Birds ; but I have endeavoured to the 

 best of my power to assign to each bird its proper systematic 

 name. It has been, of course, quite impossible to continue 

 the serial numbers of the birds beyond the point to which the 

 Manual on the Birds had reached on this second volume 

 going to press. 



I again take the opportunity of presenting to Mr. Hume's 

 readers portraits of some of the ornithologists who have made 

 Indian birds their special study. The present volume con- 

 tains portraits of the late Edward Blyth, of Mr. W. T. 

 Blanford, Colonel H. H. Godwin-Austen, and Major R. G, 

 Wardlaw Ramsay. 



EUGENE W. GATES. 



London, July 1890. 



