XU 
PREFACE. 
that my brother would have fully shared this feeling, and 
would have seen with gladness the special attention given to 
this matter by the very able editor of the new issue of the 
invaluable book in question; but it seems better I should alter 
the draught too little than alter it too much. In every depart- 
ment of natiu’al science we may see in the nomenclature a 
wholesome warning that no one may safely meddle ’svith 
synonyms who is not thoroughly master of the subject, and 
of an extensive special library to boot. Accordingly, I have 
not even ventured to append authorities to the specific names, 
the birds being all so readily cognisable, — except, perhaps, in 
the case of the Motacillidm, which seem to perplex all alike. 
The wild and picturesque country in which the scene of the 
book is laid has many aspects of singular interest, nor are 
personal reminiscences of the hospitable manners and cultivated 
minds of its leading inhabitants of a kind to render easy an 
exclusive attention to one of those aspects alone ; it is, however, 
solely with its ornithological conditions that we have here to 
do. These have been dealt with by other hands before now, 
though not in such full detail ; but there is one point in which 
the present work differs not only from them, but, I venture to 
think, from all the numerous monogTaphs by which in this 
generation the interests of the science have been so largely 
promoted. It tells of a most marked and rapid change in a 
Fauna actually going in a direction the very opposite of that 
which we are accustomed to deplore as the result of the 
development of material prosperity and of increasmg civili- 
sation. It is true that the customary issue of contact with this 
latter force is being only too grievously seen in the case of 
some few species, but as regards a large number of others the 
accession is very decided. The planting a few trees, carefully 
sheltered by stone walls from the sweeping gales of the 
Atlantic, has had a curiously marked effect in attracting birds 
hitherto unknown as visitors to the islands ; an effect, indeed, 
altogether disproportionate to the small scale on which the ex- 
periment has been tried. The extensive and often extremely 
