vi BIRDS OF LA PLATA 
indicates that the species treated here are of the 
Plata country—a district of Argentina, Furthermore, 
it gives the book its proper place as a companion 
work to The Naturalist in La Plata. That book, also 
now old in years, has won a permanent place in the 
Natural History libraries, and treats of all forms of 
life observed by me; but as it was written after 
Argentine Ornithology, I kept bird subjects out of 
it as far as possible, so that the two works should 
not overlap. I may add that Argentine Ornithology 
was issued in a limited edition, and that copies are 
not now obtainable, 
One would imagine that during the long thirty 
years which have elapsed since these little bird bio- 
graphies were first issued, other books on the same 
subject would have seen the light. For since my 
time many workers in this same field have appeared, 
Natural History Societies have been formed, and one 
among them, exclusively a bird-lovers’ association, 
issues a periodical founded on the Jbis pattern, and 
entitled El Hornero—The Oven-Bird. 
That, at all events, is what I supposed. But I 
hear that it has not been so: naturalists out there 
have been saying that my book of 1889 and that of 
Azara, composed a century earlier—The Birds of 
Paraguay and the River Plate—are the only works 
yet published which treat of the life habits of the 
birds in that region, 
This, I take it, is a good and sufficient reason for 
the re-issue of so old a work. The lives of birds is 
a subject of perennial interest to a large and an 
