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INTRODUCTION . 
has brought some striking novelties from Nubia, and 
recently from Abyssinia ; while some of the birds of 
the latter country, collected and sent to England by 
the late Mr. Salt, have been imperfectly mentioned*. 
These, in short, are the only gleanings that have heeri 
made in the vast extent of three-fourths of this wide- 
spreading continent; for even the shores bordering 
upon the Mediterranean, and the fertile and well- 
wooded provinces of Asia Minor have been quite 
neglected, notwithstanding the interest they possess 
in determining the limits of the three regions which 
there meet, namely, Europe, Africa, and Asia. It 
is only in the southern extremity, long inhabited by 
Europeans, that any thing effective has been yet 
accomplished. The name of Le Yaillant takes the 
lead in this quarter, and the six splendid volumes 
that he has given to the world, record how great was 
the success that attended his exertions in our fa- 
vourite science. Yet notwithstanding his numerous 
discoveries, many others remained to be made ; and 
the three zoologists who subsequently chose this field 
for their exertions, Lichtenstein, Burchell, and Smith, 
added materially to our list of S. African birds. The 
latter naturalist, more especially, has already transmit- 
ted to this country many new and interesting species. 
Such, in a few words, is the state of our know- 
ledge on the ornithology of Africa, up to the present 
moment ; so that the portion w r e have now selected 
* Unfortunately nearly all these species have been mixed 
up in the old genera, so that they become as useless to modem 
science as if they had not been discovered. 
