PREFACE 



Principal Objects. One result of the growing interest taken during recent 

 years in the study of ornithology is a considerable addition to our knowledge of 

 the habits of British Birds. As no important comprehensive British work on the 

 subject has appeared since the well-known Histories of Yarrell (revised and partly 

 rewritten by Newton and Saunders, 1871-85) and Seebohm (1883-85), this know- 

 ledge remains inaccessible to those of us who are not prepared to search through a 

 large and scattered literature, periodical and other. The sources of information 

 available, moreover, before the above Histories appeared, have yet to be exhausted. 

 Superior to both of them, in its account of a number of our species, is the monu- 

 mental German work of the Naumanns, father and son, a new edition of which, 

 revised by several prominent European ornithologists under the editorship of 

 Dr. Carl Hennicke, was issued in 1897-1905 under the title of the Naturgeschichte 

 der Vogel Mitteleuropas. But this edition, while giving very complete treatment to 

 the description and distribution of most of the species, still leaves unrecorded many 

 of the observations on their habits that have been made in our own and other 

 countries. There is, therefore, place for a work that will bring together from every 

 source, foreign and native, all the available information of any importance concern- 

 ing the habits of British Birds. To do this, and to do it in a form interesting alike 

 to the student of animal life and the general reader, is the chief object of the present 

 undertaking. 



Though we have a considerable body of information at our disposal concerning 

 the habits of our native birds, it would be idle to deny that it must be regarded as 

 very defective when compared with what we know about then- structure or even 

 their geographical distribution ; so much so that it is impossible, and will no doubt 

 long remain impossible, to systematise it, except to a limited extent, in such a way 

 that the same class of evidence can be recorded with equal exactness and complete- 

 ness under the head of each species. To take one example only : it is not possible 

 at present to give, in the case even of many of our commoner birds, a detailed reliable 

 description of the differences in the nuptial displays that occur at the beginning of 

 the breeding season ; yet one has only to turn over the pages of Darwin, Wallace, 

 and their successors to realise how important is the evidence that the ornithologists 

 might bring to the solution of the vexed question of sexual selection. 



iii 



746307 



