92 INTRODUCTION. 



has brought some striking novelties from Nubia, and 

 recently from Abyssinia ; while some of the birds of 

 the latter country, collected and sent to England by 

 the late Mr. Salt, have been imperfectly mentioned*. 

 These, in short, are the only gleanings that have been 

 made in the vast extent of three-fourths of this wide- 

 spreading continent ; for even the shores bordering 

 upon the Mediterranean, and the fertile and well- 

 wooded provinces of Asia Minor have been quite 

 neglected, notwithstanding the interest they possess 

 in determining the limits of the three regions which 

 there meet, namely, Europe, Africa, and Asia. It 

 is only in the southern extremity, long inhabited by 

 Europeans, that any thing effective has been yet 

 accomplished. The name of Le Vaillant takes the 

 lead in this quarter, and the six splendid volumes 

 that he has given to the world, record how great was 

 the success that attended his exertions in our fa- 

 vourite science. Yet notwithstanding his numerous 

 discoveries, many others remained to be made ; and 

 the three zoologists who subsequently chose this field 

 for their exertions, Lichtenstein, Burchell, and Smith, 

 added materially to our list of S. African birds. The 

 latter naturalist, more especially, has already transmit- 

 ted to this country many new and interesting species, 

 Such, in a few words, is the state of our know- 

 ledge on the ornithology of Africa, up to the present 

 moment ; so that the portion we have now selected 



* Unfortunately nearly all these species have been mixed 

 up in the old genera, so that they become as useless to modern 

 science as if they had not been discovered. 



