Preface to the First Edition, 



T71 VERY naturalist may not be a sportsman, but there are certainly very few 

 JLj sportsmen that are not, or do not eventually become, ardent naturalists. 

 The habits and economy of birds are specially the naturalist's own province ; but 

 then, on the other hand, no sportsman worthy of the name is indifferent to the 

 life-history of the birds and beasts that are the object of his chase. A man 

 who would be a successful sportsman must be familiar with the ways of the 

 creatures that furnish his sport ; not only so, the constant chase of bird and beast, 

 in nine cases out of ten, creates a desire for knowledge, and a wish to know 

 something more of their economy. 



The present volume has been written with the object of furnishing the 

 naturalist and sportsman with concise yet fairly complete, and I hope accurate, 

 information respecting the Game Birds and Wild Fowl of the British Islands, 

 and their allied races and species in other parts of the world. I have sought to 

 bring this information up to date, not only by including several species new to 

 our avi-fauna, but by dealing with these birds from an evolutionary point of view, 

 and according to modern ideas on and recent discoveries in that particular branch 

 of natural knowledge which is embraced by Darwinian Ornithology. Hence it 

 has been my constant care to discard insular and narrow study, which only too 

 often leads to pedantry and error, and to treat the birds incorporated in the 

 following pages on broad, evolutionary lines, and from a more cosmopolitan point 

 of view. The inevitable result of such treatment has been the recognition of 

 local races, subspecies, or climatic varieties, into which many of our British Game 

 Birds and Wild Fowl have been separated by the endless segregating process of 

 Evolution, working as surely at the present day as it has undoubtedly worked in 

 past ages, and will continue to work in ages yet to come. 



Of course, in a work of the present nature, I have had to rely much upon the 

 labours of other naturalists ; but in every case where such has been necessary I 

 have sought the highest, the latest, and the most trustworthy authorities for the 

 information required ; whilst my own more than twenty years' experience in the 

 study of Ornithology, both from the scientist's and the field naturalist's point of 

 view, has been of incalculable service in assisting me to separate the sound wheat 

 of reliable knowledge from the unstable chaff of ignorance and error. The last 

 twenty years have been eventful ones for Ornithology, fraught with discoveries 



