t51 
' 14 (, 
V . !X 
PREFACE. 
The first volume of this work comprises the various species of 
birds which are included in the Orders Raptores and Insessores. 
Under the former, are included the several species of the families 
of the eagles, vultures, and owls ; — under the latter, those of the 
families of the shrikes, flycatchers, thrushes, warblers, tits, wag- 
tails, pipits, waxwings, larks, buntings, finches, starlings, crows, 
woodpeckers, creepers, cuckoos, bee-eaters, kingfishers, swallows 
and night-jars. 
The present volume likewise contains the birds of two orders, 
— Rasores and Grallatoresf^ Under the former, the families of 
the pigeons, grouse, and bustards are included, — under the latter, 
those of the plovers, herons, the various genera comprised in 
the family Scolopacida, as the curlews, sandpipers, godwits, 
snipes, &c . ; the families of the rails and phalaropes. 
* The species comprised in the three Orders^ Raptores, Insessores, and Rasores, 
were treated of by the author some years ago — hut much less fully than in the present 
work — in a series of papers commencing in the second volume of the ‘ Magazine 
of Zoology and Botany’ in 1838, and continued occasionally in the ‘Annals of 
Natural History ’ until 1843. None of the matter on the Orders Grallatores drcidi 
Natatores (which latter will be embraced in the third volume) has hitherto been 
published, excepting notices of a very few species recorded as additions to the Fauna 
of Ireland in the excellent journal already named. 
VOL. II. 
A 
