BIRDS. 99 



was a far better guide, since it would at least arrange 

 itself head to the wind, so that its feathers might not 

 be unduly ruffled, just as waterfowl can only rise 

 from the water head to wind. The greed for know- 

 ledge so characteristic of the nineteenth century has 

 made itself felt in no direction more than that of 

 natural history. If the old beliefs had to go, the sooner 

 they were replaced with the bare truth the better for 

 all concerned. And so, as knowledge grew from more to 

 more, the natural history of their fathers went piecemeal. 



Hence the books. Elaborate monographs, illustrated by 

 what were then costly processes, of the various orders and 

 families ; minute county records ; popular life-histories of 

 sea-birds, moor-birds, forest-birds, London birds, and the 

 rest; volumes on their eggs and nests, their migrations, 

 their voice ; treatises on the birds of the classics, of the 

 Bible, of Shakespeare, of heraldry : in short, the changes 

 have been rung on the bird theme until any original addi- 

 tion to the shelf would seem impossible. Yet, for all the 

 fifty works on British birds, many of them running into 

 several volumes, that have, as may be seen from the bibli- 

 ography appended hereto, been either completed or com- 

 menced during the past ten years, students of the subject 

 are looking forward with the greatest interest to the ap- 

 pearance of the new edition of Mr Howard Saunders' 

 'Manual,' or, more locally perhaps, to the long-expected 

 volume on Hampshire birds from the pen of Mr Hart of 

 Christchurch. The summary of British birds given in the 

 following pages has of necessity been compressed until it is 

 little more than a list. But little has there been said on 

 the subject of the external features of birds, and on one or 

 two other points of interest, upon which I therefore venture 

 to preface a few notes. 



Some of the reasons why these islands should, under 

 certain conditions, prove peculiarly attractive to birds of 

 passage have already been indicated on a previous page. 

 At any rate, of the birds known to science, probably not 



