X 
PREFACE. 
Gould, Reichenbach, Heine, Mulsant, and worked at by Von 
Berlepsch, Boucard, and others for years, to say nothing of 
Mr. Salvin’s own previous study of the Family. Mr. Hargitt’s 
four new genera of Woodpeckers were reserved for publication 
in the “Catalogue,” and so were Mr. Ogilvie-Grant’s few 
generic names of Hornbills and Game-Birds, but all these 
families had been monographed, some of them more than 
once, before the authors began their “ Catalogues,” and there- 
fore the chance of there being any genera which had escaped 
notice by previous writers was extremely small, and the same 
may be said of the volumes written by Captain Shelley and 
Count Salvador!. 
On the other hand, fair play would have demanded an 
acknowledgment of the fact that the groups of birds which 
fell to my lot in the “Catalogue” had been practically un- 
worked before, and it is not in the least surprising that, in 
monographing such difficult families as Babbling-Thrushes, 
Finches, Starlings, &c., a close study should discover generic 
differences, while many of the larger birds, such as Bustards 
and Cranes, had not been monographed for many years 
before I did them in the “ Catalogue.” My views are, I 
dare say, not those of the older school of ornithologists, any 
more than are those of Dr. Reichenow and other “ German 
friends,” or those of Mr. Ridgway and Dr. Stejneger, the 
“American cousins,” who are evidently regarded by Canon 
'I'ristram as the cause of my backslidings 1 
The whole question appears to me to be a very simple one. 
Canon Tristram evidently does not like what he calls the 
“new-fangled” ideas of some of the younger school of i 
ornithologists, because they were not in vogue in his younger ^ 
days, but the collections which are now in the cabinets of the ' 
British Museum provide a completeness of material with 
which our forefathers were totally unacquainted. It was ( 
