Arrangement of Book 21 
still render a fair account of most cliffs or do a day’s wading in 
a marsh, sufficient in any case to reach a nest I may want to 
photograph. 
The results of some of these expeditions will be found in this 
book. 
Those who know the works of Lord Lilford and Colonel Irby 
and their unrivalled knowledge of the birds of the Spanish Penin- 
sula will easily realize how much this book owes to them. 
More especially several of the plates are from original drawings 
made for Lord Lilford and subject to his unerring scrutiny and 
approval. 
But besides Lord Lilford and Colonel Irby there have been 
others who have studied the birds of Spain. Among these was 
the late Mr. Howard Saunders who in 1869-1871 wrote a series 
of papers to the /ézs—Lord Lilford’s first papers appeared in 
the /ézs in 1865-66. Still later is the book entitled “Wild Spain” 
published in 1893 which deals in a popular and attractive manner 
not only with the birds and general natural history but also with 
a diversity of other matters such as Spanish agriculture, wine- 
growing, bull-fighting and gipsies. All who are interested in Spain 
should read this book. I have often regretted that it did not appear 
twenty years earlier when I first went there. 
In the following pages no attempt has been made to place the 
various birds described in their proper scientific sequence, for reasons 
which will be sufficiently obvious to the reader. 
The arrangement adopted is based roughly on the usual habitat 
of the birds; thus the first group deals with those most commonly 
met with in the low-lying marshes of Spain and the second with 
those which frequent the grass plains and open undulating country 
adjacent thereto. The third comprises the woodland birds which 
nest in trees in the hills around and the fourth those which usually 
resort to the sea-cliffs. The Raven, although both a tree-nester 
