president’s address. 
117 
favourably with the moro or loss inaccurate, because hurried, 
character of much of the ornithological literature of the present 
day. It is impossible to insist too strongly on the fact that no 
amount of genius will compensate for the absence of work, — hard 
work, — dogged, determined work, — patient, untiring work, and 
it is precisely this kind of work which frightens most English 
country gentlemen. They only play with their favourite pursuit, 
and consequently our knowledge of ornithology creeps slowly 
along at a snail’s pace, instead of advancing by leaps and bounds 
as it ought to do. Gurney’s great merit was that he worked at 
ornithology. 
I do not know whether it ought to be regarded as fortunate or 
unfortunato that he chose a difficult group upon which to work. 
The Rap to res are a small group, not quite numbering four hundred 
species, but they are almost cosmopolitan. That the Order should 
have a large range is an advantage to the student, because the greater 
the difference of environment the wider is presumably the extent of 
differentiation, and tho more marked the characters by which the 
species may be diagnosed. But unfortunately for the student who 
attempts to complete a study of the Raptores in a couple of years, 
not only the genera have extended areas of distribution, but some 
of the species range from the Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and 
America, to the confines of the tropics, and vary more or less with 
the variation in the climates where they breed. 
The difficulty of discriminating between these numerous local 
races is greatly increased by the difl'erences attributable to age and 
sex. In many species the male differs greatly from the female ; and 
the young have quite a different plumage from the adult, and in a 
few species they take several years to accomplish the change, so 
that there are several intermediate stages between the young in 
first plumage and the fully adult. In other species there is great 
individual variation, which is not local in its distribution, and 
appears so far as we have been able to discover to be absolutely 
accidental, like the colour of a Ruff’s feathers or a Guillemot’s egg. 
Of course these differences are not accidental, but we have not yet 
been able to correlate them with any other fact. 
