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Havine in the summer of 1837 brought my work on the “ Birds of Europe” to a successful
termination, [ was naturally desirous of turning my attention to the Ornithology of some other
region; and a variety of concurring circumstances induced me to select that of Australia, the
Birds of which, though invested with the highest degree of ere had been almost entirely
neglected. Dr. Shaw, in his “ Zoology of New Holland,” had devoted a few plates to the
subject, from specimens collected by Sir Joseph Banks during the first voyage of Captain
Cook; the “ Birds of New Holland” by Lewin comprised not more than twenty-six plates ;
and figures and descriptions of a few species were given in the earlier voyages of Phillip,
White and Collins, and the more recent one of King, At a subsequent period the late
Mr. Vigors and Dr. Horsfield commenced an elaborate memoir on the Collection of Australian
Birds in the possession of the Linnean Society ; but unfortunately, they did not proceed
farther than the Melphagide, and the non-completion of their labours is the more to be
regretted, inasmuch as the Linnean Society's collection of Australian birds, at that time the
finest extant, comprised many species collected by Mr. Brown during his voyage with the
celebrated navigator Flinders, and was moreover enriched with some interesting notes by the
late Mr. George Caley, by whom the collection was chiefly formed. Descriptions of many
Australian birds were also included in the works of Latham, Shaw, Cuvier and Vieillot, as well
as in several of the recent French voyages of discovery ; still no general work on the subject
had been undertaken, and nearly all that had been recorded by the various writers above
enumerated, had reference almost exclusively to the productions of New South Wales and Van
Diemen’s Land, these heing almost the only explored portions of that great country. In the
absence, then, of any general work on the Birds of Australia, the field was comparatively
a new one, and of no ordinary degree of interest, from the circumstance of its being one of the

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