2 
PREFACE. 
British bird. Resting on the rigging, many a bird might 
cross the ocean with a steamboat from the New World 
to the Old. 
I would not hesitate to admit as British, after one well 
authenticated visit, a bird of Europe, or of those coun¬ 
tries at no great distance from us and closely bordering 
upon the European continent; but, until there is a well- 
attested fact that a land bird can cross on wing some 
thousand miles of sea, I would rigidly exclude all birds 
which are exclusively Asiatic or Australian or American, 
and would either doubt the authority which told me that 
they had been seen alive and at large in Britain, or feel 
perfectly convinced that they had escaped from con¬ 
finement. 
Oatlands, Walton-on-Tbames, 
April, 1853. 
