INTRODUCTION. 



Although ornithology has made such rapid strides during the last quarter of a century, and 

 many excellent works have been written on the avifauna of our island, as well as of various 

 other European countries, yet, since the publication of Gould's ' Birds of Europe,' no work has 

 been written in the English language on the ornithology of Europe ; and it was with a view to 

 supply this want that the present work was commenced. Dr. C. K. Bree certainly published a 

 work entitled the ' Birds of Europe,' of which a second edition has lately appeared ; but it 

 contains merely those species which have not been met with in the British Isles, and it cannot 

 fairly be counted as a complete work on the avifauna of Europe. 



In the present work I have, as will be seen, avoided taking the limits of Europe, politically 

 speaking, as previous authors on the subject have done, but have included the whole of the 

 Western Palsearctic Region, and have thus adopted natural instead of political boundaries. By 

 so doing a broad strip of Northern Africa, the Azores, Canaries, and Madeira, and the major 

 portion of Asia Minor have been added to the area which has been hitherto included by those 

 authors who have written on European ornithology ; and I have striven as much as possible to 

 make the present work more especially a history of Western Palsearctic birds rather than a 

 history of the birds of the Western Palaearctic Region ; that is, I have excluded those species 

 which, though they may have occurred as rare stragglers, essentially belong to extra-limital 

 genera. 



When we contemplated the publication of the present work it was remarked to us by a 

 well-known naturalist that we should be able to add but few species to the European list ; it 

 may therefore be of interest to ornithologists to see how far this prediction has been verified, 

 as a comparison with the previously published works on the subject will clearly demonstrate. 

 Temminck, in his first edition of the ' Manuel d'Ornithologie,' included 336 species; but of these 

 I deduct 12 as being either included on insufficient grounds, or else as being bad species, thus 

 reducing the total to 324. In his second edition he included 510 species, many of which were 

 certainly extra-limital, and some of them not valid species ; and deducting these, 48 in number, 

 there remain only 462. 



Gould includes 449 species ; but of these the following, viz. Emberiza lesbia, Tetrao hybridus. 



