INTRODUCTION. xix 



the utmost of my ability to take my facts from Nature herself, and I have 

 travelled far and wide in the endeavour to find them for myself instead of 

 copying them from books. The imperfections of my book are not due to 

 want of taking pains, though it has been finished in three years. Much of 

 it has been copied from old journals, Avritten from time to time amidst the 

 scenes described ; but of course a considerable portion has necessarily been 

 compiled from the works of others, and to no one am I more indebted than 

 to the giant of ornithology, the great Naumann. The principal materials 

 have been collected in Europe. Three seasons spent in the Arctic Region, 

 one in Norway, one in East Russia, and one in Central Siberia have given 

 me an opportunity of seeing many birds in their breeding-grounds which 

 visit us only in winter. Three summers in the south of Europe, one in 

 Asia Minor, one in Greece, and one in the valley of the Danube have made 

 me acquainted with many of our rarer visitors, which have also been watched 

 during the breeding-season in Holland, Jutland, Brunswick, Pomerania, 

 and other parts of Germany, not to mention a flying visit to Canada and 

 the United States. A residence of five-and-twenty years within a short 

 distance of Sherwood Forest on the one side and the Derbyshire Moors on 

 the other, varied with repeated trips to Flamboro', the Fames, and the 

 Bass Rock, has made me familiar with our common birds. No one can 

 appreciate more than I do the charms of what is technically called " field 

 ornithology,''^ and no one can appreciate more than I do the difficulty of 

 transferring this charm to paper. That I have not been able to repro- 

 duce more of it is my greatest regret. I have taken a great deal of trouble 

 to avoid blunders ; but with all my care many have crept in, though I hope 

 not very important ones. The acquisition of Swinhoe's collection of 

 Chinese birds added to my Siberian skins gave me an exceptionally good 

 opportunity of discovering the intergradation of many supposed species, 

 though I afterwards found out that American ornithologists had long 

 ago investigated the fact and devised a system of nomenclature to recog- 

 nize it. I have endeavoured to give to this inevitable result of the process 

 of evolution the importance it deserves. One of my chief aims has been 

 to decoy the reader from the provincial or insular point of view from which 

 ornithology has been regarded by too many of its lovers in our islands, and 

 to endeavour artfully to make their ornithological tastes more cosmopolitan. 

 Against two crying evils in the study of my pet science I have set my face 

 resolutely. In my endeavours to cover them with ridicule and contempt 

 I fear I may sometimes have given oftence. If I have done so, I beg to 

 apologize most sincerely. I have not the slightest ill-feeling against any 

 ornithologist personally ; my quarrel is with the errors which have seduced 

 them. The two great errors to which I allude are the wanton multiplica- 

 tion of genera and the capricious change of generic and specific names. 

 Both evils make the study of ornithology impossible, except to persons of 



