Excerpt from A History of British Birds, Vol. 1 Such a mass of material as has been furnished in the man ner indicated, enables the ornithologist of the present day also to rectify many statements made by his predecessors. In no respect, perhaps, is this fact more manifest than in determin ing the geographical range of species, whether in the fullest sense of the word British, or only occasional visitors to our shores. It will be remembered that precision on this point was made by Mr. Yarrell a prominent feature of his work and, when the amount of information at his disposal is taken into consideration, it must be conceded that he was therein eminently successful. The excellent example which he himself set by adding to or correcting statements bearing upon this important subject, in his successive Editions, will not be lost upon the new editor, nor will the equally suggestive alterations in the arrangement of certain species be neglected by him. When Mr. Yarrell had satisfied himself that his original allocation of certain forms had been erroneous, he did not hesitate to correct the mistake - as, for instance, the Pratincole and the Phalaropes, placed in his First Edition among the Rails and Coots, but subsequently, with unquestionable propriety, referred to the Plovers and Sandpipers. The editor, therefore, will not scruple to make such systematic changes as may be considered to be satisfactorily established. He is, however, desirous of stat ing that, in cases which may be still regarded as doubtful, he will, whatever be his own predilections, preserve the original order of Mr. Yarrell, thinking it a lesser evil to continue a possibly or even a probably erroneous arrange ment, than to offer a new one which time may show to be no improvement. The lax method, adopted by older writers on British Ornithology, of admitting any chance straggler from distant lands to a place beside the real inhabitants of this country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.