Excerpt from An Introduction to the Birds of Great Britain I am truly and sincerely thankful for the blessing of health which has attended me during the course of my twelve years' labour on the present work; and it was only while the Introductory matter was going through the press that a severe blight fell upon me (the untimely death of my youngest son, Dr. Franklin and cast a gloom over my future happiness. I should not have alluded to this painful subject here did I not feel it was only doing justice to his memory, inasmuch as he rendered me much assistance in the composition of the following Introduction, which, from his varied acquirements, he was well qualified to give. His loss has called forth the sympathy of many kind friends, which has in some measure assuaged the sad affliction which has befallen me. If I am spared it is my intention not to be idle; for although I do not entertain the idea of entering upon any new enterprise, I shall still pursue the subject with the same energy I have hitherto done, at one period of the year attending to the Birds of Asia, at another to the recent discoveries in the ornithology of Australia, pursuing the subject to New Guinea and the adjacent islands, the avifaunas of these latter countries being inseparable. 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.