PREFACE. 



This fourth volume of "Familiar Wild Birds" com- 

 pletes our pleasant task. If, perchance, in making 

 more familiar some of the rarer denizens of Britain, 

 we have secured for them better protection from that 

 final extinction which has already overtaken not a few, 

 we shall be well content; and may this attempt to 

 convey some idea of the wonderful variety of bird-life 

 help to promote the loving study rather than the total 

 destruction of those "wild birds" that remain. 

 >* To a General Index is added, at the request of many 

 subscribers, a classified scientific index of the birds de- 

 scribed in all the four volumes, arranged according to the 

 most recent system ^l 



( In this volume Mr. Bichard Kearton contributes 

 some notes on "Egg Collecting/,^ 



