2 INTRODUCTORY. 



persons can get much help. I confess that scarcely 

 any argument could appeal more strongly to my 

 nature than this. For I think that the study of 

 natural history fails of its finest fruit if it does 

 not lead us to regard living creatures generally 

 with a kindly and sympathetic interest which 

 tends to make all needless sacrifice of their lives 

 more and more repugnant to our feelings. The 

 first steps may have to be taken through blood, and 

 I must own that in my boyhood I was murderous 

 in heart, but not in hand, for I had no gun, only a 

 catapult ; and for this I am thankful. I seldom 

 killed anything, while the hours I spent in stalking 

 my game and watching for a chance of getting a 

 fair shot taught me more about the personal habits 

 of birds than I could have learned in any other way. 

 Since that I have shot a great many beautiful and 

 harmless birds with ever-increasing reluctance, but 

 there was no other means of becoming acquainted 

 with them. The descriptions in Jerdon and Barnes 

 and Oates all presuppose a specimen in your hand, 

 to be measured with a foot-rule and examined feather 

 by feather. There was no museum to which I could 

 resort, and it was seldom my lot to fall in with 

 anybody who could enlighten me if I asked, What 

 bird is that ? Most gladly therefore would I try to 

 make atonement now by helping others to know 

 without killing, as far as it lies in me. 



But I am afraid that the kind friends who ask me to 

 write an account of the Birds of Bombay have a very 

 faint idea of the difficulties of the task. In the first 

 place nobody knows, till he has tried it, how difficult 

 a matter it is to make such an object as a bird in a 



