vill INTRODUCTION. 
Africa. The late Professor Sundevall has published an elaborate 
review of Levaillant’s six volumes, which enables the ornithologist 
so to study the work that all the species, whether truly South 
African or not, can be easily made out. We have found little to 
dissent from in Professor Sundevall’s admirable treatise. 
A work of a much more genuine character was commenced when 
Sir Andrew Smith began to investigate the Zoology of South Africa. 
In the South African Quarterly Journal from 1829 to 1834, we 
find a descriptive account of the birds of South Africa, which, 
however, never seems to have proceeded beyond the Birds of Prey ; 
and in the same journal, there are several scattered descriptions of 
other kinds of birds. 
In 1836, a separate Report of the expedition into Central Africa 
was published by Sir Andrew Smith, and this was in every 
respect a most important contribution to the avifauna of the South 
African region. It was followed by his great work, the “Illustrations 
of the Zoology of South Africa,” in which no less than 114 plates of 
birds were published. These were drawn by the late Mr. Ford, 
and although this admirable artist was by far the best draughtsman 
of reptiles and fishes that science has ever known, his efforts with 
regard to the birds were not so successful, and considerable 
confusion, especially in the case of the smaller Warblers and Larks, 
has followed from the difficulty of identifying Mr. Ford’s plates. 
Excepting descriptions of various South African birds in the works 
of Burchell, Temminck, Swainson, Gray, Bonaparte, and others, 
nothing of any importance appears to have been published until 
Sundevall’s account of Wahlberg’s collections made its appearance 
in the Stockholm (Mfversigt for 1850. Wahlberg penetrated 
into the Transvaal, at that time included under the general heading 
of “ Caffraria.”’ He procured many interesting species, both from 
Natal and the Transvaal State; and he afterwards visited Damara 
