INTRODUCTION. Xili 
name of the recorder may be taken as a sufficient guarantee 
for the genuineness of the record ; and it would be obviously 
unfair to omit all mention of a report because the truth of it 
could not now be satisfactorily ascertained. Further than 
this, it has been deemed more prudent to notice erroneous 
reports for the sake of showing them to be so, than to incur 
a risk of being supposed to have overlooked them by omitting 
all allusion to their existence. 
It has been already stated that in order not to extend the 
limits of this book unreasonably by going over ground which 
has been already well worked, all details as to haunts, habits, 
&c. have been purposely omitted. Nevertheless, in a search 
for what has been really required, it has frequently happened 
that important essays and short notices of a valuable nature 
have been met with; and to preserve a note of these for 
future reference has appeared almost as desirable as to index 
the records of rare visitants. On this account therefore, and 
especially when they have not been alluded to in the standard 
works before mentioned, a brief reference to volume and page 
has been given, the object being to save time and trouble to 
the reader by referring him direct to valuable sources of 
information which might otherwise remain unknown or over- 
looked. In some cases these have come to hand too late for 
insertion in their proper place, and have therefore unfortu- 
nately been omitted. To some extent, however, this may 
yet be remedied, and the work rendered more complete, if the 
reader will take the trouble to insert upon the proper pages 
the following scraps of information :— 
In Scotland the Hobby (p. 4) is of more frequent occur- 
rence in the eastern than in the western countries (Gray, 
Birds West Scot. p. 29). Three instances of its being killed 
in Kirkeudbrightshire are given by Mr. Tottenham Lee, 
(‘ Naturalist, 1853, p. 44); and it has once been taken in 
