VI 
PREFACE. 
The love of natural history, especially of ornithology, 
has ever been a mainspring with me, and has formed 
the sole object of many journeys, incidentally of all. 
The results I have endeavoured to compress into the 
smallest compass, although, personally, I regard them 
as the most valuable section of this book. 
Illustration of wild-life becomes ever increasingly 
difficult. Ten years ago nothing that was artistic was 
correct, and vice versa. Of late years, art has broadened 
its border, and some recent drawings of bird-life are 
the best the world has ever seen. Birds have surrendered 
to the pencil, but big-game (in Europe) remain outside 
the pale. Co-operation is still necessary ; but I believe 
that several of Mr. Wliymper’s drawings in this book, 
based on my own rough but careful sketches from the 
life, approach the real with a fidelity not before attained. 
In completing this, the last of my four volumes, 
I may take a retrospective pride in surveying the wide 
area covered—hardly an appreciable extent of really 
wild land in Western Europe, from Southern Spain to 
Spitsbergen, but has been inspected, if not explored. 
From the first chapter in 1888, to the last in 18.97, 
every line represents work at first-hand, and all has 
undergone the supervision of my friend Mr. Howard 
Saunders, to whose sound advice and unsparing criticism, 
both my readers and 1 are indebted to a degree that 
would be difficult to define and impossible to exaggerate. 
South Bailey, Durham, 
March 31, 1897. 
A. C. 
