PREFACE. 



THE present work is an attempt to afford a practical 

 and comprehensive survey of the living birds of the 

 world for the benefit of those who have not the time 

 or inclination to engage in dissection or detailed museum 

 work, but wish to form, from simple ordinary ob- 

 servation of living or stuffed birds, some idea of the 

 relationships and attributes of the birds they may meet 

 with, especially foreign species ; for presumably readers 

 of this book will have made themselves acquainted 

 with the familiar species of our own country, on which 

 so many useful handbooks have been published. 



The alphabetical order in which the families are 

 treated has been adopted from the point of view of 

 expediency, as the families of birds are so numerous, 

 and their relationships to each other, even if they 

 were completely agreed upon by ornithologists, could 

 not in any case be exhibited naturally in linear order. 

 When a sub-heading under any family is omitted, it 

 is implied that the author had no information on that 

 point. 



The concise and systematic form in which the infor- 

 mation about each family is given will, it is hoped, 

 be found particularly convenient for reference, and the 

 credit for this is due to Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell, F.R.S., 

 Secretary to the Zoological Society, who, before his 

 appointment to that post, was engaged in writing a 

 work somewhat on the present lines, in co-operation 

 with the present writer, and has kindly allowed him 

 to use the idea. 



