PREFACE. 



To working ornithologists, the maritime counties of 

 England are essentially of primary interest, both fi'om 

 the numerous species which regularly haunt the seaboard 

 and estuaries, and from the frequent occurrence of rare 

 European forms upon the coastline. 



When, therefore, I came to Cumberland, in 1882, I 

 naturally asked myself, " What is the Avi-fauna of this 

 county?" An examination of faunal literature shewed 

 that, while the counties of Durham and Northumberland, 

 of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Sussex, Cornwall, and 

 Somerset, had been treated of exhaustively, or in part, 

 by Messrs. John Hancock (1874), W. E. Clarke (1881), 

 J. Cordeaux (1872), H. Stevenson (1866-70), A. E. Knox 

 (1849), E. H. Rodd (1880), Cecil Smith (1869), the literature 

 of the Aves of the north-west of England was wholly of 

 a meagre and unsatisfactory character.! I at once decided 

 to devote every fragment of leisure to the elucidation of 

 the Avi-fauna of Cumberland, and sought the fullest in- 

 formation on all hands, visiting all districts and sifting 

 every fact presented to me with the utmost care. As 

 my notes amassed, I proposed to my valued colleague, 



t Mr. Mitchell's Birds of Lancashire, and A Catalogue of the Birds of 

 Norfolk, by Mr. J. H. Gurney, junr., have .since appeared ; as, also, 

 Mr. Armibtead's Notes on some of the Birds of the Sol way district 

 (Naturalist, 1885, 1886). 



