Preface. vii 



pretensions of a scientific character, nor does it aspire to be other 

 than a plain account of the Birds of Wiltshire, written by a 

 Wiltshire man, and for Wiltshire people, and is meant to 

 supply in a popular manner some information to those who are 

 not very learned in the subject, but who desire to know some- 

 thing of the feathered tribes by which they are surrounded, as 

 well as those which periodically or occasionally visit us. There 

 are no scientific disquisitions in this volume. I have not even 

 touched on the writings of Charles Darwin, much as I admire 

 and heartily as I accept the groundwork of his beautiful theory. 

 I shall probably be accused of turning a deaf ear to modern 

 discoveries, and of putting forth a treatise which might have 

 been written fifty years ago. No doubt, to a certain extent, there 

 is some truth in such accusations ; but to dabble in science, and 

 to argue on scientific subjects without much scientific knowledge, 

 very soon leads the presumptuous writer into a very quicksand 

 of trouble. I can, then, discourse on birds only according to my 

 lights, and if I be somewhat old-fashioned and behind the age in 

 my old-world notions, I submit that modern opinions are not 

 always correct, and that our predecessors in ornithology were not 

 always so ignorant as modern presumption sometimes supposes. 

 Moreover, this professes to be in some sense a reprint of that 

 which was published before the theories of Darwin and Wallace 

 were put forth, and before the new nomenclature and classifica- 

 tion came into existence. 



But whatever the nomenclature for a rose under any other 

 name would smell as sweet and whatever the classification (for 

 this is, at last, but a matter of opinion on which our best orni- 

 thologists still differ widely), the study of birds still remains, as 

 in the good old days of Gilbert White and Bewick, a most in- 

 teresting and fascinating study, carrying its votaries along the 

 most pleasant paths, and adding tenfold interest to every walk. 

 The unobservant passer-by may think that all birds are alike, 

 except in size and colour ; the casual observer may imagine that 

 in this pursuit there can be little to learn ; but the truth is, that 

 in all pursuits of this kind, and certainly not the least so in the 



