A HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS, 



In Six Volumes, Super Royal 8vo, price 6 6s., containing 365 Coloured EngraYings, 

 BY THE REV. F. 0. MORRIS, B.A., 



Dedicated by permission to Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen. 



" Mr. F. O. Morris is well known to our readers by numerous 

 letters in which he has vindicated the right of curious birds, occasional 

 visitors to our shores, not to be improved off the face of the earth simply 

 because they are rare, and of birds which are not curious not to be extir- 

 pated simply because, for the time, they happen to be numerous. Lovers 

 of Natural History and of Nature know him even better as a most diligent 

 and agreeable writer on almost every one of the provinces in this wide 

 subject, so far as they concern our own island. No doubt brother explorers 

 will by no means always accept his theories or conclusions, but his pre- 

 mises are manifestly his own, gathered by himself, and with the refreshing 

 air and tone of positive personal experience about them. He has carefully 

 studied the works of other labourers in the same field, but with the view 

 rather of ascertaining what light their researches throw on his own than 

 of appropriating their facts. 



" Numerous highly-finished plates, drawn and coloured from the birds 

 and eggs themselves, make of these volumes, which would, if only for 

 the letterpress, have been necessary to the student of Natural History, 

 luxuries, though by no means dear ones, to what we are sorry to say is the 

 far larger class of persons who like pretty books irrespective of their 

 special subject matter. We hope some, at any rate, of such persons may 

 be converted, in spite of themselves, into students of the world in which 

 they have been hitherto living without taking the trouble to find out any- 

 thing about their neighbours in it. Mr. Morris's Library of Natural 

 History includes British moths and butterflies as well as birds, but we 

 confess to a preference for our old friends, the birds. We are quite ready 

 to accept still all the responsibility of the quotation from our columns 

 which Mr. Morris incorporates in his preface to this second edition : 



ik ' The proper study of mankind is man : the favourite study of 

 mankind is certainly birds, beasts, and fishes Natural History, in short. 

 Above all, birds seem to exercise the greatest attraction over young and 

 old, rich and poor/ " TIMES. 



" In this holiday season, when half the world is enjoying the 

 healthful breezes of seaside and country, mountain and moor, and the 

 other half ' in populous city pent " are vainly sighing for that enjoyment, 

 here is a book which will be as welcome to those who wander as to 

 those who stay at home. To the former it will be a congenial guide 

 and companion through the various pleasant scenes to which 

 their summer rambles may lead them ; to the latter it will, by its vivid 

 delineations of Nature, almost make up for the absence of the green fields 

 and shady woods, and blue tracts of ocean which are ever floating dimly 

 before their minds. 



'The six goodly volumes of this work, which has already gained a 

 world- wide circle of readers, have recently appeared in a new and cheaper 

 edition, beautifully got up, handsomely printed, and lavishly adorned with 

 hundreds of coloured plates most admirably executed. Indeed every bird 

 which has established itself to be styled ' British ' has sat for its portrait, 

 and been called upon to give an account of its haunts and habits, the 

 place where it seeks its food or builds its nest, and every particular of its 

 little history, whether it be a dweller on land or the shore, or the ' great 

 and wide sea.' Consequently, these charming volumes carry us into all 

 the retired green nooks, and out-of-the-way corners of Old England, 

 its quiet meadows, country lanes, immemorial woods, breezy downs (lovely 

 meadows) and surf beaten cliffs. Wherever the voice of a bird is heard, 

 or the wing of a bird is seen, or the shadow of a bird falls lightly on 

 grass, or corn, or lake, or river, thither are we borne by the author in the 

 interesting descriptions and endless anecdotes which make Morris's 



