The Preface and Introduction to my “ Birds of Australia” 
having been set up in small type for facility of correction, I 
have had a limited number of copies printed in an octavo 
form, for distribution among my scientific friends and others, 
to whom I trust it will be at once useful and acceptable. 
They must however still regard it more as a proof-sheet than 
otherwise, inasmuch as it contains many imperfections, most 
of which have been corrected in the folio edition ; for instance, 
the family terms and genera are here given without the 
authorities, which have been added in the larger work. 
With respect to the arrangement, it will be seen that while 
I have not proposed one of my own, I have not implicitly 
adopted that of any previous writer, but have chiefly followed 
that of the late Mr. Vigors ; the time in fact has not yet arrived, 
when a philosophic view of the ornithology of the world can be 
achieved, hundreds of species and many forms yet remaining 
to be discovered, without a knowledge of which any general 
arrangement must necessarily be most imperfect. I am not 
speaking in disparagement of the attempts at classification that 
have hitherto been made, all and each of which has its own 
individual merits, and tends to promote the object we wish to 
arrive at- — a natural arrangement : we are in truth merely the 
pioneers preceding the great master mind, which will doubt- 
