OBSERVATIONS 



BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY. 



Article I. Division and Arrangcrnent of British 

 Genera and Species of Birds, with references to 

 Plates ; serving for reference to the descriptive 

 part intended to follow. 



In the above Synoptical Catalogue I have inserted 

 all those Birds which have been recorded on good 

 authority as British. I have put the Black Stork, 

 Ciconia Nigra, with a query, not because I in 

 the least doubt the authority of its being killed in 

 England, but because I have never admitted birds 

 on one solitary instance ; from the possibility of 

 their having escaped from ships or some domestic 

 confinement. If I admitted birds merely on such 

 grounds to be British, I must admit the Canary Bird, 

 having found this bird more than once singing in 

 the Woods in Essex, though not a great way irom 

 a Town. I have also seen the Green l^arrot flying 

 over the village of Walthamstow, escaped, no doubt, 

 from a cage. In judging of the habitat of a British 

 bird, I have followed a mode of reasoning, founded in 

 some degree on the common doctrine of probabilities : 

 thus, by comparing the number of instances of any 

 })articular scarce bird being shot in England, with the 



