1V PREFACE. 
Dr. Blanford died in 1905. For twenty-seven years he 
had been a member of the Indian Geological Society and 
had acquired a wide and deep knowledge of the geology of 
that great Empire. But he was a man of the utmost width 
of scientific interest. During his many journeys he kept a 
keen eye on the fauna of British India and it was this first- 
hand knowledge that enabled him so successfully to complete 
the great work begun by Mr. Oates. Dr. Blanford was an 
indefatigable worker and everything that he wrote was of 
the highest order of merit, marked by thoroughness and 
accuracy. 
Mr. Oates survived his editor by six years. He had spent 
thirty-two years in the Public Works Department of India 
and had devoted all his spare time to the ornithology of 
British India. He was chiefly stationed in Burma and was 
undoubtedly the world’s authority on the birds of that 
country. His “ Birds of British Burma” in two volumes is 
still a standard work, though it has perhaps been to some 
extent replaced by his later work in “The Fauna of British 
India.” 
He is described by those who knew him as being a lovable 
but at times hot-tempered man ; but officia's who have spent 
a large part of their lives in the tropics are apt to be a little 
hot-tempered. The fact that Mr. A. O. Hume made over to 
Oates the whole of his notes and correspondence when the 
latter was preparing his work on “The Nests and Eggs of 
Indian Birds” testifies to the high regard he inspired in his 
contemporaries. On his retirement he was requested by the 
Trustees of the British Museum to catalogue their large 
collection of British eggs, and he prepared a manuscript 
of four volumes, covering about 50,000 specimens. The 
first two volumes of this catalogue were issued during his 
lifetime. 
3oth he and Dr. Blanford are splendid examples of men 
carrying on thorough scientific work in the rare and sporadic 
intervals of exacting, official duties. 
