Tl PREFACE. 



science and pursuit, to say nothing of well-sinewed 

 limbs, and hearts tuned for enjoyment, that are to be 

 met with there, and met with in abundance by all who 

 will but take the trouble of seeing with their own eyes 

 and hearing with their own ears. It has been my wish 

 and my endeavour to produce a book upon which the 

 reader could lay his hand and say, " Herein I shall find 

 a notice of every feathered creature which I may meet 

 within the four seas, or on their margins, so expressed 

 as to correspond with its appearance and habits in free 

 nature ; and by the help of which I shall not only know 

 each bird when I see it, but, in some sort, borrow its 

 wings, and soar with it and survey the glories and the 

 wonders of that creation of which it forms so lively and 

 so enlivening a part." 



My first purpose was to attempt the accomplishment 

 of this in a single pocket volume ; but, in spite of all my 

 efforts, it has extended to two ; and even then, I have 

 been again and again constrained to shut the door upon 

 some of my favourites, before they had half told their 

 story. The bird, too, is only a disjointed fragment, 

 without the scene and the season or other cause which 

 brings it to that scene; and when, in the contemplation 

 of nature, we once begin to trace the relation between 

 subject and subject, it is always difficult, and in some 

 instances impossible, to stop the analysis, till it has car- 

 ried us beyond the range of merely human reasoning, 

 to that sublime field where we can but admire, and dare 

 not restrain our adoration. The passages in which I 

 have ventured to indulge in that strain will be found to 

 be few ; but as it is the ultimate feeling in the study of 

 nature, and the one which repays most fully and exqui- 



