xxiv A HISTORY OF BIRDS 



origin — snail, robin, squirrel, whichever I am — you will 

 be near to understanding man's nature, mechanism and 

 origin — near to understanding — yourself!" And so 

 there are endless books on the natural history of animals, 

 their kinds, their structure, their mode of action, their 

 habits, growth, reproduction, food, their relations to one 

 another and to other living things. Any one book 

 treating of animals in every possible way would be too 

 large ; moreover, our knowledge about animals is always 

 growing and receiving quite new accessions, so that no 

 one should complain of the number of such books, and 

 every new one, if it is really a new one and written by 

 a real " Knower " of animals, should be welcome. 



Mr. Pycraft's series of four volumes called Animal 

 Life is a really new book on animals, and its novelty 

 and excellence is exhibited in the volume on Birds 

 written by Mr. Pycraft himself. 



In the first place, let me say what may not be known 

 to every reader, though well-known to all scientific 

 zoologists — that Mr. Pycraft is a most competent 

 authority on birds ; he has devoted his life to them, 

 and has studied with specially favourable opportunities 

 their skeletons and their plumage and the stages in 

 their growth, so as to add greatly to our knowledge. 

 From the museum at Leicester he came to assist me 

 in the University Museum at Oxford in 1892, and later 

 was appointed to the staff of the Zoological Department 

 of the British Museum, where I again had the oppor- 

 tunity of seeing and appreciating his work. 



In the second place, the plan of the book on Birds 

 (which will be followed in the other volumes on Mam- 

 mals, on Reptiles, Amphibia and Fishes and on Inverte- 

 brates) is original. We do not start with a scheme of 

 classification and then take up the groups one by one 



