PREFACE. 
T HE completion of this Volume coincides with another step to the agreement 
in connection with the scientific nomenclature of Australian Birds. 
The reorganised Check List Committee of the Royal Australasian 
Ornithologists’ Union has recently forwarded me the draft copy of the specific 
names they consider recognisable and it is a great pleasure to find that at the 
present time scarcely any divergence exists. By eliminating personal prejudice 
the members of the Committee have concluded that the great majority of 
the names used by me are correct, and are sanctioning them as the official 
names. In some cases their researches have enabled them to detect errors 
in some of my results, and such errors I have immediately corrected. In a 
few cases they still regard the data provided as inconclusive, and these matters 
will be later agreeably adjusted. At the present time there is scarcely as 
much disagreement in connection with Australian bird names as there is in the 
matter of British bird names, though the latter have been handled by so many 
more workers. With the bird names a matter of little importance, more study 
will be given to the habits and also to the internal features, and here again I 
anticipate the majority of the results placed on record for the first time in 
this work will be emphatically endorsed by later and better placed workers 
in our study. The Check List Committee have ignored genera in their prepara- 
tion of their List, utilising the large, incongruous groups, which have no scientific 
value, in preference to the small groups I have diagnosed in this work. As 
instance the complete vindication of my studies in the Plovers, published in 
my third volume, by Dr. Lowe, of the British Museum. Dr. Lowe has just 
published a study of the osteological features quite independent of my results, 
and has proven that the internal features completely agree with the superficial 
ones when due care is paid to each item. Variation in internal characters 
is also as commonly found as in external features and consequently it is necessary 
to study long series to value exactly the observed differences. Consequently 
some of Dr. Lowe’s present conclusions will probably be later modified in the 
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