British birds

PLATE I. GOLDEN EAGLE. ⅙ NAT. SIZE.
W. H. HUDSON, C.M.Z.S.
WITH A CHAPTER ON STRUCTURE AND CLASSIFICATION BY FRANK E. BEDDARD, F.R.S.
With 8 Coloured Plates from Original Drawings by A. Thorburn and 8 Plates and 100 Figures in black and white from Original Drawings by G. E. Lodge and 3 Illustrations from Photographs from Nature by R. B. Lodge
NEW IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1921
All rights reserved
The plan followed in the descriptive portion of this work has, I trust, the merit of simplicity. A brief account is given of the appearance, language, and life-habits of all the species that reside permanently, or for a portion of each year, within the limits of the British Islands. The accidental stragglers, with the irregular or occasional visitors, have been included, but not described, in the work. To have omitted all mention of them would, perhaps, have been to carry the process of simplification too far. And as much may be said of the retention in this book of Latin, or ‘science’ names. The mass of technical matter with which ornithological works are usually weighted is scarcely wanted in a book intended for the general reader, more especially for the young. Nor was there space sufficient to make the work at the same time a technical and a popular one: the briefest description that could possibly be given of the characters of genera would have occupied thirty to forty pages. The student must, in any case, go to the large standard works on the subject, especially to those of Yarrell (fourth edition), Seebohm, and Howard Saunders, which are repositories of all the most important facts relating to our bird life, gathered from the time of Willughby, the father of British ornithology, down to the present.