INTRODUCTION. 



rpHIS EDITION will be found to differ from the first in 

 the following particulars. 



I. It having been thought useful to give, in the body of the 

 Dictionary, an explanation of the terms used by those who have 

 written upon Birds, and also some account of their anatomical struc- 

 ture and physiology, I have, in accordance with this, distributed 



Colonel Montagu's original Introduction in the order of the 

 alphabet, under the articles Egg, Incubation, Migration, 

 &c. ; and other interesting observations under Cuckoo, Gold- 

 crested Wren, &c, because they directly related to these 

 birds. 



II. To supply the place of the original Introduction, the matter 

 of which has been thus transferred to what was deemed a more 

 logical station, I have drawn up a Plan of Study, according to 

 the method I have pursued in my own researches, — namely, first 

 observing a fact or circumstance in the fields, then endeavouring 

 to discover the design it was intended to serve by the great 

 Creator, and subsequently examining the statements to be met 

 with in books, in order to compare these with what I had 

 actually observed. This will be seen to differ from the current 

 methods of study, by giving importance to single facts or circum- 

 stances personally observed, and traced to their Providential causes ; 

 while by the other method these are represented as of no intrinsic 

 use, their value being only relative, as connected with some 



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