PREFACE. 



THIS l>ook has been written with the exclusively practi- 

 cal object of enabling persons unacquainted with British 

 birds to identify them by their most obvious characteristics. 

 Handbooks hitherto designed for this purpose have, by classi- 

 fying the birds according to genera and species, or by arranging 

 them merely in alphabetical order, failed to meet this need. 

 For it is obvious that a beginner who wishes to identify a 

 bird he has observed for the first time, and therefore one of 

 which he does not know the name, cannot turn up the de- 

 scription of it by the aid of an alphabetical list. Nor can 

 he be expected to know where to turn to find it in a book 

 \vlu-rein birds are grouped according to generic distinctions, 

 about which as yet he knows nothing ! 



The observations of beginners relate to broad distinctions 

 of colour and markings, then to peculiarities in the gestures 

 and notes of birds, and so on, and it is only by seeking to 

 see birds with the eye of a beginner that one can assist him 

 to the knowledge of what he does not know, as a natural 

 development from what he himself may observe with no other 

 equipment than his own eyes. Any other method involves an 

 attempt to explain the unknown by what is equally unknown. 



The grouping of birds under such headings as 'Black- 

 and- White Birds,' 'Ruddy-Breasted Birds,' 'Trunk-Climbing 

 Birds,' &c., as are here used, has the obvious merit of pre- 

 senting birds to the beginner as he himself sees them. 

 When, as in the case of the Bullfinch, a bird might be 

 sought under two headings in this case 'Black-Capped 

 Birds ' and ' Ruddy-Breasted Birds ' cross-references direct 

 the student to that group in which it has been deemed best 

 that the description of it should appear. 



Where necessary, notes are appended to the descriptions, 

 indicating those birds with which the one described is most 



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