-T3? 





**fc 



PREFACE. 



The first volume of this work comprises the various species of 

 birds which are included in the Orders Baptores and Insessores. 

 Under the former, are included the several species of the families 

 of the eagles, vultures, and owls ; — under the latter, those of the 

 families of the shrikes, flycatchers, thrushes, warblers, tits, wag- 

 tails, pipits, waxwings, larks, buntings, finches, starlings, crows, 

 woodpeckers, creepers, cuckoos, bee-eaters, kingfishers, swallows 

 and night-jars. 



The present volume likewise contains the birds of two orders, 

 — Rasores and Grallatores.* Under the former, the families of 

 the pigeons, grouse, and bustards are included, — under the latter, 

 those of the plovers, herons, the various genera comprised in 

 the family Scolopacidce, as the curlews, sandpipers, godwits, 

 snipes, &c. ; the families of the rails and phalaropes. 



* The species comprised in the three Orders, Raptores, Insessores, and Rasores, 

 were treated of by the author some years ago — but much less fully than in the present 

 work — in a series of papers commencing in the second volume of the ' Magazine 

 of Zoology and Botany' in 1838, and continued occasionally in the 'Annals of 

 Natural History' until 1843. None of the matter on the Orders Grallatores and 

 Natatores (which latter will be embraced in the third volume) has hitherto been 

 published, excepting notices of a very few species recorded as additions to the Fauna 

 of Ireland in the excellent journal already named. 



VOL. II. A 



