22 OXFORD : SPRING AND EARLY SUMMER. 



If the reader of this book who really cares to understand 

 the differences of the bird-life which abounds around us, 

 will buy for a shilling Mr. Dresser's most useful lAst of 

 Ewropean Bi/rds,^ he will find, under the great family of 

 the Tv/rdidae, three sub-families following each other on 

 pages 7, 8, and 9, respectively called Sylmcmae, or birds of 

 woodland habits, Phylloscopinae,- or leaf-searching birds, and 

 Acrocephalinae, or birds belonging to a group many of the 

 members of which have the front of the head narrow and 

 depressed; and under all these three sub-families he wiU 

 find several species bearing in popular English the name of 

 warbler. At the same time he will find other birds in these 

 sub-families, which are quite familiar to him, but not as 

 ' warblers ' in any technical sense of the word ; thus the Eobin 

 will be found in the first sub-family, and the Golden-crested 

 Wren in the second. But, leaving out these two species, 

 and also the Nightingale, which is a bird of somewhat peculiar 

 structure and habits, he will find four birds in the first 

 sub-family belonging to the genus Sylvia, which are all 

 loosely called warblers, and will be mentioned in this chapter 

 as summer visitors to Oxford, viz. the Whitethroat (or White- 

 throat-warbler), the Lesser Whitethroat, the Blackcap, and 

 the Garden-warbler ; he will also find two in the second, 

 belonging to the genus PhyUoseopus, the Chiff-chaff and the 

 Willow-wren (or Willow-warbler), and two in the third, 

 belonging to the genus Acrocephalus, the Sedge-warbler and 



' Published by its author at 6 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square. 



