PREFACE. 



The present work is the first of a series of Manuals 

 which the Author proposes to bring out, if his health 

 be spared, on the Natural History of the Vertebrated 

 Animals of India. The want of such books has long been 

 greatly felt in this country; and the increasing attention 

 now paid to Natural History calls, more imperatively, for 

 the fulfilment of this desideratum. 



The author's uninterrupted residence for above a quar- 

 ter of a century in India, during which period he has 

 diligently examined the Faunae of the different districts 

 in which he has been a resident, or a traveller, has 

 enabled him to give, in detail, from personal observation, 

 the geographic distribution and limits of most of the 

 animals of this country ; for^ with the exception of the 

 North-West Provinces, the Punjab, and Sindh, he has 

 traversed and re-traversed the length and breadth of the 

 continent of India, and has also visited Burmah. 



This experience, and an earnest wish to be of use to 

 naturalists and travellers in India, are the author's chief 

 claims for attempting such an ambitious task ; and, had 

 others better qualified come forward, he would have relin- 

 quished, however unwillingly, what to him has been a 

 labor of love. He has, however, had the inestimable ad- 

 vantage of constant correspondence, and, in latter years, 

 of personal intercourse, with Mr. Blyth of the Asiatic 

 Society's Museum, than whom no one would have been 

 better qualified to write such a work, had his health been 

 good, and his time his own. But the constant drudgery 



