PREFACE. 



I BEGAN to form a collection of bird-skins soon after I com- 

 menced my residence at Oxford in 1848, being induced to do 

 so by the advice of the late Mr. H. E. Strickland, who told me 

 that that was the only method of obtaining a correct knowledge 

 of the various forms of this class of animals. A few years 

 afterwards I found that the whole group of birds was much too 

 large a subject for special study, and I reduced my views to that 

 of making a good series of the Passeres, Scansores, and Fissi- 

 rostres of the New World. I chose these three Orders, because, 

 in the first place, the lesser bulk of the greater number of the 

 individuals belonging to them renders them cheaper to purchase 

 and more convenient for the limited space available to a private 

 collector ; and, secondly^ because it appeared to me that many 

 famihes of the American birds of these Orders were comparatively 

 but little known, and presented a fine field for investigation in 

 the way of new species and unrecorded peculiarities of structure. 

 I proceeded to take up one family after another and prepared 



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