CHAPTEE VI. 



THE PARADISE OF THE CHABABBIIBjE. 



This work is not a monograph of the group of birds which comprises the Plovers, the 

 Sandpipers, the Snipes, and their nearest alUes ; it treats only of the classification of the 

 family Charadriidse into subfamilies, genera, subgenera, species, and subspecies. I propose 

 for the most part to confine the description of each of these groups of individuals to those 



characters which are diagnostic, 

 and to make the geographical 

 distribution of each species the 

 piece de resistance of my bill 

 of fare. In the preliminary 

 chapters I have endeavoured 

 to show the general character 

 of the laws of evolution by 

 which these various groups 

 have become differentiated, and 

 I have tried to point out the 

 main events in the past history 

 of each species which must 

 have happened in order to explain its present geographical 

 distribution. 



In so doing I am perfectly well aware that I have left out 

 the most interesting branch of my subject. I have said little or nothing about the habits 

 of the birds of which I treat ; but what little I could add on this, to all true lovers of Habits of 

 Nature profoundly interesting, I might say intensely fascinating, subject, I have already aireldy™*^^ 

 written in ' Siberia in Europe' and ' Siberia in Asia,' or in the ' History of British Birds.' described. 

 There is, however, one branch of the local distribution of the Charadriidse to which it 

 may be well to devote a chapter, and gather into a focus the scattered allusions to 

 the locality whence, in my opinion, the ancestors of the family originally emigrated, and 

 whither so many of their descendants annually migrate to breed, 



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