IX 



I therefore cannot pass an opinion on them with any degree of certainty ; but Buteo menetriesi 

 appears to me to be exceedingly close to, if not identical with, Buteo desertorum. Sturnus 

 nitens, Hume, from the Caucasus, may possibly prove to be Sturnus purpurascens, Gould, which 

 species is not included by Professor Bogdanoff; and I do not think that Montifringilla alpicola 

 can be fairly separated from Montifringilla nivalis. Professor Bogdanoff remarks that Gecinus 

 saundersi, Tacz. (J. f. Orn. 1878, p. 349), is a mere variety of Gecinus viridis, and certainly not 

 a valid species, and must therefore be expunged from the list. Hesperipliona carneipes, Embe- 

 riza huttoni, Parus phwonotus, Erithacus hyrcanus, Baulias hafizi, and Sitta rupicola are all 

 inhabitants of Persia; and it is therefore not to be wondered at that they should also be met 

 with in the Caucasus. 



Hitherto the few works that have been written on the ornithology of Europe have included 

 those species only which occur north of the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles and west of the 

 Ural range, none of the Atlantic islands being included ; but the present work embraces all the 

 species found in the Western Palsearctic Region. This region comprises the whole of conti- 

 nental Europe to the Ural range, Scandinavia, Spitzbergen, the British Isles, Iceland, the 

 Faeroes, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Isles, a comparatively narrow strip of North 

 Africa, reaching to the border of the desert, Asia Minor (excluding the Jordan valley, which is 

 essentially Ethiopian), and the Caucasus. The northern and western boundaries of this region 

 are clearly enough defined ; but the eastern and southern ones are far more difficult to fix. 



The eastern boundary which I have adopted consists of the Ural range of mountains and 

 river, from the extreme northern portion of that range down to the mouth of the Ural river, 

 from whence it skirts along the western shores of the Caspian down to the frontiers of Persia, 

 where an imaginary line is drawn across to the Euphrates, and thence southward along the 

 borders of the Arabian desert, so as to include Syria and Arabia Petrsea down to the Bed Sea ; 

 but from this I exclude the Jordan valley, which is, as shown by Canon Tristram, essentially 

 Ethiopian. 



In fixing on the above boundary I have been obliged to cut in two, as it were, the Persian 

 subregion ; for in this subregion Asia Minor and Syria as well as the whole of Persia have been 

 included ; but I do not see how I could have done otherwise, except by relegating Asia Minor 

 and Syria to the Eastern Palsearctic Begion, which would not have been feasible. 



The Tropic of Cancer appears to be the best southern boundary of the region ; that is, it 

 extends to the first cataract of the Nile, in Eastern Africa, and about as far as the Ouro river on 

 the western side of that continent. As, however, I have striven as much as possible to make the 

 present work a history of Western Palsearctic birds, rather than a history of the birds of the 

 Western Palsearctic Begion, so as to include every species that has been met with within the 

 borders of that region, I have deemed it advisable to exclude some few species, which, although 

 they have straggled within the above limits, yet are purely Ethiopian, or else belong to essen- 

 tially extra-limital genera. Amongst these I may enumerate Amydrus tristrami, Nectarinia 



