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confines birds wheedled by the warmth of the Gulf-stream ; it has not the prospect 

 of the eastern coast, whither atornis may drive strange migrants overtaken by a 

 change in the wind or by the darkness of the night ; it is far away from the sea- 

 board, so that the fishers of the ocean are but waifs and strays ; it has no wild 

 lakes and meres like Norfolk, wherein the great shy inhabitants of such localities 

 can find even a temporary home. It is mainly a cultivated land, where no un- 

 expected guest can be seen in any likelihood, save by the merest accident. There 

 are few wild fastnesses where may breed or be sheltered Peregrine or Chough ; no 

 apparently limitless moors, such as those of Scotland or Yorkshire, untraversed 

 by any save the shepherd or the sportsman. Still the Red Grouse finds a home on 

 the Black Mountains, and Dr. Bull tells that the birds bred there are larger in 

 size, and lighter in colour, than those of the Scottish hills. 



Nevertheless, Herefordshire is almost a typical midland county, and its 

 avifauna is well worth a survey. Bird-men, like all other scientists, are sticklers 

 for their own pet classification ; and few have ever been, or perhaps ever will be, 

 satisfied with the same. But in his "Notes," Dr. Bull has followed the arrangement 

 of the lUs List ; and I, upon whom most of the labour spent in its compilation fell, 

 trust that his reliance upon it may not be the least of its results in attaining some- 

 thing like imiformity. Names really matter so little, so long as we know to which 

 species they refer, and that the less they are disturbed the better. 



In the Ibh List there are enumerated 452 species, but of these only 376 

 are allowed to be really, and strictly speaking, British birds ; and many even of 

 these are but accidental and local visitors to our shores. In the table which follows 

 the preface in the List, no fewer than 165 species are put down as "occasional 

 visitors " only. So that the total number of properly British birds is reduced to 

 211. In Dr. Bull's "Notes" we have 202 species recorded as having occurred in 

 Herefordshire. Although in this local list many species obtain a place which the 

 editors of the British Ornithological Union List describe as "occasional vi.sitors," 

 still this is a very fair, if not a high, average, for a county situated as Hereford- 

 shire is. Few inland counties, unless they have exceptional good fortune, can 

 show a better record. 



In his Introduction, Dr. Bull acknowledges the latest edition of Yarreir.s 

 " History of British Birds " as the basis of the " Notes on the Birds of Hereford- 

 shire ; " so we naturally expect that he should have, in the labour of compilation, 

 disjointed as we know that was by the professional calls upon his time, taken many 

 a stray note which touched him as peculiarly worthy of emphasis, and incorporated 

 them in a work which he especially prepared as a conspectus of the observations 

 of others. Never during his lifetime did he assume that his "Notes" were anything 

 but a compilation, enriched by the contributions of his fellow Woolhopeans. The 

 book would have been weary reading, if he had given references to, or stated the 

 source of, every separate statement that he made. He doubtless thought it 

 sufficient, as most of his predecessors have, to name the authority for those records 

 which, without some such authority, would have been worthless. So long as a 

 statement is true, it does not matter much to future generations who it was 

 that first discovered the fact. But it is a matter of great importance 



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