PREFACE. 



Every naturalist may not be a sportsman, but there are certainly 

 very few sportsmen that are not, or do not eventually become, 

 ardent naturalists. The habits and economy of birds are specially 

 the naturalist's own province ; but then, on the other hand, no 

 sportsman worthy of the name is indifferent to the life-history of 

 the birds and beasts that are the object of his chase. A man 

 who would be a successful sportsman must be familiar with the 

 ways of the creatures that furnish his sport ; not only so, the 

 constant chase of bird and beast, in nine cases out of ten, creates 

 a desire for knowledge, and a wish to know something more of 

 their economy. 



The present volume has been written with the object of 

 furnishing the naturalist and sportsman with concise yet fairly 

 complete, and I hope accurate, information respecting the Game 

 Birds and Wild Fowl of the British Islands, and their allied races 

 and species in other parts of the world. I have sought to bring 

 this information up to date, not only by including several species 

 new to our avi-fauna, but by dealing with these birds from an 

 evolutionary point of view, and according to modern ideas on 

 and recent discoveries in that particular branch of natural know- 

 ledge which is embraced by Darwinian Ornithology. Hence it 

 has been my constant care to discard insular and narrow study, 

 which only too often leads to pedantry and error, and to treat 

 the birds incorporated in the following pages on broad, evolu- 

 tionary lines, and from a more cosmopolitan point of view. The 

 inevitable result of such treatment has been the recognition of 

 local races, subspecies, or climatic varieties, into which many of 



