VI PREFACE. 



especially, of those wilder forms whose remote and desolate 

 haunts, and intensely wary natures, have ever opposed the 

 utmost difficulties to their study and close observation. I 

 have endeavoured to treat the subject from a broad, rather 

 than a local, standpoint. Ornithology loses half its charm 

 when restricted by artificial boundaries the feathered world 

 recognize none but those of natural or physical adapti- 

 bility. An undue development of the prevalent system of 

 " county ornithology," with its arbitrary limits and restricted 

 "faunal areas," must have, in my opinion, a tendency to 

 stunt the true interest of this study as a whole, and to 

 narrow its scope. 



Birds are cosmopolitans : those which one day we regard 

 as British, may be African or Asiatic the next ; the true 

 home of very many lies amidst Arctic solitudes ; and for 

 many more our islands only provide a temporary refuge 

 from the intolerable summer-heats of the tropics. Hence a 

 full appreciation of ornithological science involves consider- 

 able foreign research or better, foreign travel, far more than 

 has fallen to the lot of the author. Every opportunity, how- 

 ever, has been so utilized, and having some half-dozen times 

 crossed the North Sea in different directions, once the Arctic 

 Ocean, and thrice the Bay of Biscay, I have explored a few of 

 the wilder and more remote regions of Europe from Southern 

 Spain to Spitzbergen. Of these foreign experiences, it is my 

 hope some day (should the present venture succeed) to write 

 some account, and very probably they may prove the more 

 interesting and eventful. Perhaps I have undertaken the 

 hardest task first ; but for the present I beg to commend 

 this volume to the kindly indulgence of the reader, in the 

 confidence that it embodies the results of much careful work 

 and thought. 



E.OKER, SUNDERLAND, 



December 17, 1888. 



