yi PEEFACE. 



in the necessity for which, much as I regret their existence, 

 I am obliged to concur have precluded the addition of any 

 save the very briefest notes on habits, migration, folk-lore, 

 and other interesting points, the inclusion of which in Jerdon's 

 work added so greatly to its attraction. 



On the other hand, the classification adopted by Jerdon 

 was obsolete even when he wrote, and was in many respects 

 inferior to that employed by Blyth, thirteen years previously, 

 in his ' Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum of the Asiatic 

 Society ' (Calcutta) . Unfortunately this faulty classification 

 of Jerdon's has become so closely associated with the Indian 

 Ornithology of the last quarter of a century, partly from the 

 general use of Jerdon's work as a text-book, partly from the 

 employment of his serial numbers, with interpolated additions, 

 in all Mr. Hume's writings, that many Indian ornithologists 

 are probably unacquainted with the important additions to 

 our knowledge of bird-classification made by Huxley, Garrod, 

 Forbes, and other writers, and, it may be feared, will not 

 welcome the changes that have become necessary. It may be 

 hoped that the facilities for the determination of specimens 

 afforded in the present work by the generic and specific keys 

 and by the woodcuts will serve to mitigate the regrets of 

 those who are attached to the old system of classification. 



The arrangement of the families of Acromyodian Passeres 

 proposed in this volume is new, and partly based on a charac- 

 ter of unquestionable value as evidence of relationship the 

 plumage of the young birds. The subdivision of the Passeres 

 has long been one of the great difficulties of ornithologists, 

 and one who had devoted much time and thought to the 

 subject, the late W. A. Forbes, was accustomed to say that 

 the whole order consisted of a single family. In all proba- 

 bility the difficulty of subdividing the order will never be 

 completely solved, the fact being that the Passeres are a 



