PREFACE. 
THE idea and general scheme of this work were first entertained 
by me as far back as 1895, and from time to time since then 
I have worked at gathering up and piecing together the materials 
until during the past year the work had grown to such proportions 
and approached so nearly towards completion that I deemed 
it worthy of publication. To say that even as now published 
it is complete, would be claiming too much for it, since with 
such a vast field open to research, both in literature and dialect, 
the possibilities of addition and correction are still very great. 
The first work approaching the scheme of the present volume 
was Swainson’s “Folklore and Provincial Names of British 
Birds,” published in 1886, which contains nearly 2,000 local 
and other English names, but the author did not attempt to 
deal with the important matter of book-names of species, and 
moreover the work, useful as it is, suffers somewhat from not 
being arranged in the form of a dictionary. Compared to 
Swainson’s work, Newton’s “ Dictionary of Birds” (1893-6) 
contains a great many less names, as might be expected from the 
scope of the book, which was too wide to allow the author to 
direct much of his great talent and research upon this limited 
subject. Mr. Hett, in 1898, issued a short list of names in his 
“Call Notes of Birds,” and in 1902 he published a much more 
extended list, containing nearly 3,000 names, although it com- 
prises merely a list of names with the species they refer to and 
includes many mere variations and mis-spellings. In the 
present ‘‘ Dictionary ” I have assembled, including variations of 
spelling, nearly 5,000 names. Of course there are also partial 
or local lists of names to be found in various ornithological 
works and periodicals of all kinds. The labour of collecting, 
collating and working up these names from a hundred or more 
