INTRODUCTORY. 3 



tree recognisable by means of words. A picture 

 would often do it in an instant, but there are no 

 pictures of the birds of India, at least none worth 

 mentioning. I hope that the simple drawings which 

 head these chapters will prove usetul so far as they go. 

 Again, what are the Birds of Bombay ? Imagine 

 one undertaking to describe the human inhabitants 

 of Bombay. I am told that the Czar of Russia has 

 eight hundred subjects in our island. I suppose 

 that the Ameer of Afghanistan has many more, to say 

 nothing of the Khan of Khelat and the Akhund of 

 Swat. The heathen Chinee is not scarce, and I have 

 seen the Jap, there are certainly Persians and Turks 

 and Egyptians and Negroes and Burmans and 

 Malays and Jews of several varieties and Armenians ; 

 and every nation in Europe is represented. In short, 

 \\hatcountryisthereofwhichonecansay with any 

 confidence that there is not one native of it in 

 Bombay ? Franz Joseph Land perhaps. And the 

 case is pretty much the same with the feathered 

 population. Bombay has of course its own peculiar 

 resident avifauna ; but it lies between the Indian 

 continent on the one hand and the ocean on the 

 other, and receives contributions from both. A 

 storm at any time may toss the Frigate Bird or the 

 Booby on our shores, and a misguided Hornbill may 

 make its appearance on Malabar Hill. Then there 

 is a host of birds of passage which regularly visit us 

 every cold season, or drop in on us en passant, as 

 quails drop on board of a P. and O. steamer on its 

 way through the Mediterranean. And last, but by 

 no means least as an element of perplexity, there are 

 at all times escaped captives from the cages in the 



