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INTROD UCTOR Y. 



MANY and many a book has been written on the Birds of Great 

 Britain. Several works have been published on the fauna of our 

 own county of Lancashire, and there is a well-known book to be 

 found on the fauna in the neighbourhood of Liverpool.* This 

 little treatise is merely another contribution to the bird lore of 

 this South-western corner of the county, another drop into the 

 mighty ocean of bird literature. Notes are apt to get blown 

 away, and even the most carefully-preserved specimens will not 

 last for ever : nowhere in the whole of the county is the work 

 of the builder, year by year, becoming more apparent, so the 

 writer has thought that a comprehensive list of the identified 

 species which have occurred in the Formby district will not be 

 out of place, if only as a record to be referred to when "there 

 was no more country." Green fields and acres of muddy plough- 

 land are gradually moving further and further away, as what was 

 once the little village of Formby grows and grows into what 

 will soon be a town of considerable importance. Long before 

 the railway was ever run between Liverpool and Southport, the 



*}{yeriy, " Fauna of Liverpool," 1856. 



