PREFACE. Vll. 



to the author most appropriate. For this course, one 

 reason, among others, may be assigned, namely, that our 

 scientific naturalists, as will be seen in the Introduction, 

 have not yet exactly agreed as to the arrangement and 

 terms which are most suitable to the science ; and, there- 

 fore, were the Linnean or any other systematic arrange- 

 ment and terms adopted in the text, as, very possibly, some 

 future naturalist may strike out or discover another method 

 more consonant with nature, which might become more 

 popular, the poem, thus written, would be rendered com- 

 paratively useless. By using the common names this is 

 not very likely to occur : for the author is not so sanguine 

 as to expect that the common names of birds will be ulti- 

 mately and entirely superseded by scientific ones; at least 

 by such scientific ones as are now in use : the latinity 

 and novelty of these, if nothing else, presenting to the 

 uninitiated a disinclination, nay, a repugnance, to their 

 introduction. 



The clussical ear will, it is presumed, be always more 

 pleased with Picus martius, than with Great Black Backed 

 Woodpecker; with Tringa pugnax, than with Ruff and 

 Reeve; with Larus canus, than with Common Gull, or even 

 Sea-mew;* and Picus erythrocephalus, no very musical 

 expression, will be preferred by many to the Red-headed 

 Woodpecker ; yet it is to be feared that learning will never 

 succeed in rendering such terms popular. The best method 

 of making them so will be to anglicize them ; then, indeed, 

 the Luscinian Sylvia, or Sylviad, instead of Nightingale, 

 and Canorous Cuculid, for the Cuckoo, may occasionally find 



* Yet who would wish in that beautiful song of Lord Byron's, 

 (Childe Harold, Cunio I.) to see sea-mew exchanged for Larus 

 canus? In truth, classical names may be dignified, but they 

 generally want the charm of simplicity. 



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