GARDEN AND AVIARY BIRDS 



OF INDIA. 





 CHAPTER I. 



CLASSIFICATION AND BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 



FOR the purposes of the present work, I shall not usually 

 discuss the various orders of birds, but shall confine myself 

 to families, as the limits of these are very well defined 

 and generally agreed upon by ornithologists, while with 

 regard to the orders hardly any two books agree. The 

 scientific names employed will be those of the bird volumes 

 of the Fauna of British India for Indian Birds ; while 

 for the foreign species which I shall have occasion to deal 

 with I shall use those of the British Museum Catalogue 

 of Birds. Names of birds not occurring wild in the Indian 

 Empire are marked with an asterisk. 



And here a few words on the subject of the classifica- 

 tory terms employed by naturalists may not be out of 

 place, as they are not always understood by beginners. 



A species is a collection of individuals which reproduce 

 others like themselves. Thus, over most of India we 



