PREFACE. 
XI 
the plates should he illustrative of the habits, &c., of some of 
the most interesting of the Shetland birds ; the Snowy Owl, 
the Eed-necked Phalarope, the Black Guillemot, and the Great 
Skua, being especially marked out for this treatment. The 
author’s exceeding skill as a draughtsman would have rendered 
this feature of the book especially attractive, he having, more- 
over, while in Edinburgh, taken pains to become familiar with 
the processes of lithogTaphy, in order to secure the more per- 
fect fidelity to his thought by drawing the birds on the stone 
with his own hand. Unfortunately, the designs were not 
ready ; and the only thing to be done was to substitute some of 
his drawings of Shetland scenes and places referred to in the 
text, for the skilful adaptation of which I am much indebted 
to the well-known lithographers whose names they bear. 
In the arrangement of the subject matter, it appeared to be 
an editor’s duty to follow the course marked out for him ; and 
accordingly the orders and families are given as they are in the 
MS.; apparently taken, with very little variation, from the 
standard work of Mr Yarrell. The accomplished and genial 
author of that work did not, however, profess to be giving us 
so much a book of natural science as of natural history. It 
was enough for his purpose if he had at hand a tolerably 
convenient grouping by general affinities ; and possibly he may 
have with reason thought that, at the stage at which he took 
up the subject, the bestowal of much labour on points of 
classification would have been to diminish the attractiveness 
of writings which have so successfully allured the interest of a 
whole nation to their author’s favourite pursuits. It may also 
very well be that, in dealing with the higher organisms of the 
animal kingdom, the attention of the student is so attracted 
toward the ever-varying outward manifestations of the life as 
to dwell the less readily upon those fundamental relations, 
whether of structure or of function, which the botanist, for 
example, is accustomed to regard as his first care : nothing, 
however, is more certain than that such relations afford the 
only sound basis on which to systematise. I do not doubt 
