PREFACE. 



Of late years Ornithology has made more rapid strides than perhaps any other branch of 

 zoological research. In Oriental regions more particularly many naturalists have, within the 

 last quarter of a century, prosecuted their studies with the greatest vigour ; enormous collections 

 have been made, entirely new regions explored, and their avifauna investigated with all that 

 energy which collectors of the 19th century bring to bear on their work and doings in the forests 

 of the tropics. The pens of Blyth, Jerdon, Wallace, the Marquis of Tweeddale, Swinhoe, Pere 

 David, and Allan Hume have brought our knowledge of the avifauna of India and the countries 

 to the eastward of it to a high degree of perfection. At the time of the author's arrival in 

 Ceylon much had been done by Layard, and the results of his labours were being largely added 

 to by the researches of Mr. Holdsworth ; but nevertheless, up to that period, no complete 

 treatise on the birds of the island had been written. As a rising British colony, with fast- 

 developing resources and wealth, an increasing European community, and an educated element 

 in the native population, the production of a book on its avifauna which should take a place in 

 the series of zoological works which are invariably the outcome of civilization seemed to the 

 author a positive necessity. 



This idea was combined with a strong desire to create a taste for natural history in the minds 

 more particularly of the educated native community, and the hope of founding an ornithological 

 school in Ceylon, such as had been the effect of the labours of Jerdon in the Indian empire. 



With this view, therefore, the author devoted his entire spare time during an 8J years' 

 residence in the island to the study of its ornis and the amassing of a large collection of speci- 

 mens. Towards the close of his work he received no little encouragement in a promise of help 

 from the Government made to him by the late Governor, Sir William Gregory, who, during his 

 term of office in Ceylon, did so much for the advancement of science in all its branches, and to 

 whom the author is much indebted for his recent exertions with the existing Government on his 



