X PREFACE. 



Gould, Reichenbach, Heine, Mulsant, and worked at by Vc 

 Berlepsch, Boucard, and others for years, to say nothing 

 Mr. Salvin's own previous study of the Family. Mr. Hargitt 

 four new genera of Woodpeckers were reserved for publicati< 

 in the "Catalogue," and so were Mr. Ogilvie-Grant's fe 

 generic names of Hornbills and Game-Birds, but all th< 

 families had been monographed, some of them more thj 

 once, before the authors began their " Catalogues," and thei 

 fore the chance of there being any genera which had escap( 

 notice by previous writers was extremely small, and the sai 

 may be said of the volumes written by Captain Shelley ai 

 Count Salvadori. 



On the other hand, fair play would have demanded 

 acknowledgment of the fact that the groups of birds whi< 

 fell to my lot in the "Catalogue" had" been practically ui 

 worked before, and it is not in the least surprising that, 

 monographing such difficult families as Babbling-Thrushes 

 Finches, Starlings, &c., a close study should discover generi 

 differences, while many of the larger birds, such as Bustard 

 and Cranes, had not been monographed for many year 

 before I did them in the "Catalogue." My views are, 

 dare say, not those of the older school of ornithologists, an 

 more than are those of Dr. Reichenow and other " German 

 friends," or those of Mr. Ridgway and Dr. Stejneger, th 

 " American cousins," who are evidently regarded by Cano 

 Tristram as the cause of my backslidings ! 



The whole question appears to me to be a very simple one 

 Canon Tristram evidently does not like what he calls th 

 "new-fangled" ideas of some of the younger school o 

 ornithologists, because they were not in vogue in his younger 

 days, but the collections which are now in the cabinets of the 

 British Museum provide a completeness of material with 

 which our forefathers were totally unacquainted. It was 



