15 



important work by the late Mr. John Henry Gurney, who had devoted 

 a lifetime to the study of the Birds of Prey, is proved by the pains 

 with which he reviewed it in a series of essays extending over a period 

 of seven years (Ibis, 1875-1882) ; and it will ever be a source of satis- 

 faction to the author of this first volume of the ' Catalosrue ' that its 

 publication was the cause of Mr. Gurney^s review, which gave to the 

 ornithological world the result of the years of study which the greatest 

 authority on Accipitrine birds of our day had accumulated, and which 

 otherwise might have died with him. 



The second volume of the ' Catalogue ' contained a monographic 

 description of the Striges, and with the third volume was commenced 

 the description and synonymy of the Passeriformes. It was the inten- 

 tion of the author, as already hinted {antea, p. 6), to have followed 

 in the main the classification of Garrod, with the subdivisions of 

 Wallace and Sundevall, but this system of classification soon broke 

 down, owing to the refusal of Mr. Seebohm, who wrote the fifth 

 volume of the ' Catalogue,' to receive into the Turdid<e such obvious 

 forms as Pratincola, Copsychus, &c., which had, therefore, to be incon- 

 gruously accommodated in the Muscicapidce and Timeliidai. 



As for myself, I may say that the reception which has been accorded 

 to my labours on the 'Catalogue^ has been most gratifying, for my 

 colleagues everywhere have been generous enough to recognize in the 

 most kindly manner the work to which I have devoted the best years 

 of my life. 



The ' Catalogue of Birds ' was initiated by the Keeper of the Zoolo- 

 gical Department of the British Museum, my respected chief. Dr. 

 Giinther, and designed by him on the plan of his celebrated ' Catalogue 

 of Fishes.^ In the year 1872, when I commenced the Catalogue, the 

 Classification of Birds was in a transitional state, as anyone who 

 studies the history of Ornithology can discover, and in starting with the 

 Accipitres I reverted to the older form of arrangement. Thus the 

 Accipitres were selected for the initial volume, and the Passeriformes 

 followed. That the arrangement of the latter is scientifically faulty, no 

 one, least of all the author of the principal volumes, will deny, but for 

 this he will contend, that it is something to correlate the synonymy 

 of the genera and species of Birds, and to have described all the 

 known species up to date, a task not attempted for more than sixty 

 years. The classification of the higher groups and families will follow 

 when more material for a definite conclusion has been obtained. 



In 1882 appeared Dr. Reichenow's ^Die Vogel der Zoologischen 

 Garten,' with a scheme of arrangement of birds, which also seems to 

 have escaped Professor Newton's notice. It contains a phylogenetic 

 tree, and the location of the families displays some rather novel 



