4 * LOCAL LISTS OF BRITISH BIRDS. 
With scarcely an exception, I have excluded all volumes or 
articles which do not aim at giving a tolerably complete list of the 
Birds inhabiting the districts of which they tféat. Mere notes or 
observations on a few species only are, therefore, entirely omitted, 
even although they may be purely local. For instance, the Rev. 
H. A. Macpherson’s interesting pamphlet on The Visitation of 
Pallas’s Sand Grouse to Scotiand in 1888 (London, 8vo, 1889) and 
many similar essays are totally excluded. To have included 
such as these (that is, notices or articles on the distribution of 
single species of birds over certain areas, or their occurrence in 
certain spots) would have enormously swelled (and totally 
changed the constitution of) my Catalogue. This would, in fact, 
have made it nothing less than a complete index to the literature 
of British Ornithology—a work for which my leisure is altogether 
inadequate. As it is, the labour of hunting up the 455 entries, 
or thereabout, which appear in the Catalogue, has been very 
great. 
Similarly, I have not thought it needful to include any general 
works on the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland as a whole, 
though those on the Birds of England and Wales only, or on those 
of Scotland or Ireland only, have, of course, been inserted, be- 
cause they may be fairly regarded as “ local.” 
In every case, the titles of the volumes or articles entered in 
my bibliography have been taken by me direct from the works 
themselves, and have not been obtained second-hand, except in 
those few instances in which I clearly state that I have myself 
“not seen” the works in question. 
I must apologize for a slight want of uniformity in the arrange- 
ment and wording of the details of the various entries, which is 
due to their having been noted down at many different times and 
places, as I happened to come upon the works in question. I 
believe, however, it will be found that the information given is 
sufficient for all practical purposes. 
I have naturally derived great assistance from Dr. Elhott 
Coues’ Fourth Instalment of Ornithological Bibliography : being a 
List of Faunal Publications relating to British Birds, published in 
the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, vol.ii. 1879, 
pp. 3859-499 (Washington, 8vo, 1880). This very careful, but 
admittedly-incomplete, piece of bibliography, aims at being a 
catalogue of all volumes, papers, &c., relating to British Birds ; 
