xviii PREFACE. 
—‘Birdsnesting, being a complete description of the birds 
which breed in Great Britain and Ireland,’ made its appearance. 
Three years later, however, he was once more engaged on the old 
favourite subject—the ‘Ferns.’ The price of his beautiful book 
was necessarily comparatively high; and many low-priced fern 
books, by other writers or compilers, had made their appearance. 
In order to compete with these, a fourth edition of ‘ British 
Ferns’ was published in 1864: it was of smaller size and 
considerably lower price, and illustrated with steel-plates 
instead of by woodcuts, as in the former editions. The Intro- 
duction, as well as that to the former editions, may be noticed 
as among the most charming of Mr. Newman’s writings. 
The ‘ Zoologist’ had, since 1860, been growing more and 
more bulky: double numbers were frequently resorted to, and 
yet space could not be found for all the worthy communications 
that were received. In order to cope with this embarras de 
richesses, the ‘Entomologist,’ which had been merged in the 
‘ Zoologist’ in 1848, resumed its separate existence in 1864. A 
large part of the entomological communications at once went 
over to it, and the difficulty was at once satisfactorily met. 
From that time the ‘Entomologist’ has been steadily increasing 
in public estimation; and its circulation is, for a purely 
entomological periodical, unprecedentedly large. 
Mr. Newman had long felt the want of a book of reference on 
British birds. Montagu’s ‘ Ornithological Dictionary’ was a most 
valuable book, but it was half a century out of date; it had long 
been out of print, and was very scarce. The idea occurred that 
what was a desideratum to himself must certainly be so to 
others. The fourth edition of ‘ British Ferns’ being now com- 
pleted, and the ‘Entomologist’ fairly launched, he at once 
set to work. With the help of Selby’s ‘Illustrations of British 
Ornithology’ (1833), Yarrell’s ‘ History of British Birds’ (1856), 
the ‘ Zoologist,’ and the ‘Field,’ he laboriously brought the 
work up to date, giving a reference to Yarrell’s figure of the 
bird, and Hewitson’s figure of the egg. The editorial additions 
are naturally very great, and are separated from the original by 
editorial brackets. The ‘ Dictionary of British Birds,’ a demy 
8vo, extending to 400 pages of small type closely printed, was 
published in 1866. 
