INTRODUCTION 
EVERY author begins his work full of ambition to make it the best of its 
kind, but as it proceeds, hundreds of external considerations, chiefly 
monetary, arise to bar the way. Early in life I learnt that to write 
and illustrate a first-rate work on British birds would involve a period of at 
least ten years and an expenditure of not less than ^15,000. And then who 
could purchase such a book when it was done ? In consequence I prefer to 
limit my ambitions, and to offer to the public the best I can do by treating 
separate genera. 
The Natural History of the British Surface-feeding Ducks was so 
successful that I have been encouraged to produce the present work on Game 
Birds on similar lines, but I trust with superior reproductions. Our birds 
of the chase are a subject of perennial interest both to sportsmen and 
naturalists, and I have endeavoured to bring all that is known about them 
up to date, as well as to add much fresh material regarding the habits, 
plumages, hybrids, and varieties of a group of which I have made a special 
study for many years. Again I have had the great assistance of my friend 
Mr. Archibald Thorburn, whose work amongst his particular family of birds 
needs no eulogy on my part. It is sufficient to say that his paintings of 
gallinaceous birds have never been, nor are likely to be, surpassed in our 
generation. 
To render this artist's work as perfectly as possible has been a great 
difficulty, but I have at length found a form of reproduction which far 
surpasses the best chromo-lithography or tri-colour processes. It is a new 
method of direct transmission on to a pure paper of lasting quality. None 
of the artist's touches, however minute, are lost, nor do other hands mutilate 
the original picture in course of transmission. Moreover, there is no printed 
" screen " to trouble the eye. It is, in fact, the nearest thing yet invented 
to perfect reproduction in colour, and has not, so far as I am aware, been 
previously used in book illustration. 
