PREFACE. 
Having i n the summer of 1837 brought my work on the " Birds of Europe to a successful 
termination, T was naturally desirous of turning my attention to the Ornithology of some other 
region; and a variety of concurring circumstances induced me to select that of Australia, the 
Birds of which, though invested with the highest degree of interest, had been almost entirely 
neglected. Dr. Shaw, in his "Zoology of New Holland," had devoted a few plates to the 
subject, from specimens collected by Sir Joseph Banks during the first voyage of Captain 
Cook; the "Birds of New Holland" by Lewin comprised not more than twenty-six plates; 
and figures and descriptions of a few species were given in the earher voyages of Phillip, 
White and Collins, and the more recent one of King. At a subsequent period the late 
Mr. Vigors and Dr. Horsfield commenced an elaborate memoir on the Collection of Australian 
Birds in the possession of the Linnean Society; but unfortunately, they did not proceed 
farther than the Meliphagidce, and the non-completion of their labours is the more to be 
regretted, inasmuch as the Linnean Society's collection of Australian birds, at that time the 
finest extant, comprised many species collected by Mr. Brown during his voyage with the 
celebrated navigator Flinders, and was moreover enriched with some interesting notes by the 
late Mr. George Caley, by whom the collection was chiefly formed. Descriptions of many 
Austrahan birds were also included in the works of Latham, Shaw, Cuvier and Vieillot, as well 
as in several of the recent French voyages of discovery; still no general work on the subject 
had been undertaken, and nearly all that had been recorded by the various v^^riters above 
enumerated, had reference almost exclusively to the productions of New South Wales and Van 
Diemen's Land, these being almost the only explored portions of that great country. In the 
absence, then, of any general work on the Birds of Australia, the field was comparatively 
a new one, and of no ordinary degree of interest, from the circumstance of its being one of the 
B 
