INTRODUCTION 



TO THK 



HISTORY OF BRITISH WATER BIRDS. 



IN the preceding volume of British Land Birds, the charac- 

 ters of that part of the first great division of the feathered 

 tribes, the beautiful tenants of the air, the woods, and the 

 fields, have been described, and their figures faithfully de- 

 lineated. Amongst these were enumerated not only the 

 carnivorous and rapacious kinds, which, by the accuracy of 

 their scent, discover putrid bodies at a vast distance, and 

 those which, endowed with piercing sight, soar aloft in search 

 of their living prey, and dart upon it from an immeasurable 

 height, with the rapidity of an arrow; but also the various 

 other kinds of land birds, which, although less noticed, are 

 eminently useful to man, by clearing the earth and the at- 

 mosphere of myriads of insects, in every stage of their pro- 

 gressive growth, from the invisible egg to the period when 

 they are enabled to flutter on the wing. These, together 

 with the other branches of this great family, whose lives may 



