INTRODUCTION. Xlll 



name of the recorder may be taken as a sufficient guarantee 

 for the genuineness of the record ; and it would be obviously 

 unfair to omit all mention of a report because the truth of it 

 could not now be satisfactorily ascertained. Further than 

 this, it has been deemed more prudent to notice erroneous 

 reports for the sake of showing them to be so, than to incur 

 a risk of being supposed to have overlooked them by omitting 

 all allusion to their existence. 



It has been already stated that in order not to extend the 

 limits of this book unreasonably by going over ground which 

 has been already well worked, all details as to haunts, habits, 

 &c. have been purposely omitted. Nevertheless, in a search 

 for what has been really required, it has frequently happened 

 that important essays and short notices of a valuable nature 

 have been met with; and to preserve a note of these for 

 future reference has appeared almost as desirable as to index 

 the records of rare visitants. On this account therefore, and 

 especially when they have not been alluded to in the standard 

 works before mentioned, a brief reference to volume and page 

 has been given, the object being to save time and trouble to 

 the reader by referring him direct to valuable sources of 

 information which might otherwise remain unknown or over- 

 looked. In some cases these have come to hand too late for 

 insertion in their proper place, and have therefore unfortu- 

 nately been omitted. To some extent, however, this may 

 yet be remedied, and the work rendered more complete, if the 

 reader will take the trouble to insert upon the proper pages 

 the following scraps of information : 



In Scotland the Hobby (p. 4) is of more frequent occur- 

 rence in the eastern than in the western countries (Gray, 

 Birds West Scot. p. 29) . Three instances of its being killed 

 in Kirkcudbrightshire are given by Mr. Tottenham Lee, 

 (' Naturalist/ 1853, p. 44) ; and it has once been taken in 



