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PREFACE.
twenty are represented in these islands, of the forty-nine Families of Birds no fewer than thirty-one possess British representatives.
The Author has followed in his arrangement and nomenclature, the "Genera of Birds" of Mr. G. R. Gray; not only on account of the intrinsic authority of that work, but because it is the system on which the noble collection of Birds in the British Museum is arranged and named. The advantage, presented by this volume and its fellows, of being a Manual to the National Collection, will be readily appreciated.
Besides the carefully executed engravings of every species described in the following pages, many others, illustrating peculiarities of structure, &c., are scattered through the book.
London, 1849.
