INTRODUCTION. 
^T^HIS EDITION will be found to differ from tlie first in 
tlie following* particulars. 
I, It having been thought useful to give, in the body of the 
Dictionary, an explanation of the terms used by those who have 
written upon Birds, and also some account of their anatomical struc- 
ture and physiology, I have, in accordance with this, distributed 
Colonel Montagu’s original Introduction in the order of the 
alphabet, under the articles Egg, Incubation, Migration, 
&c. ; and other interesting observations under Cuckoo, Gold- 
crested Wren, &c., because they directly related to these 
birds. 
II. To supply the place of the original Introduction, the matter 
of which has been thus transferred to what was deemed a more 
logical station, I have drawn up a Plan of Study, according to 
the method I have pursued in my own researches, — namely, first 
observing a fact or circumstance in the fields, then endeavouring 
to discover the design it was intended to serve by the great 
Creator, and subsequently examining the statements to be met 
with in books, in order to compare these with what I had 
actually observed. This will be seen to differ from the current 
methods of study, by giving importance to single facts or circum- 
stances personally observed, and traced to their Providential causes ; 
while by the other method these are represented as of no intrinsic 
use, their value being only relative, as connected with some 
