PREFACE THE design of the Fur, Feather, and Fin Series is to present monographs, as complete as they can possibly be made, on the various English birds, beasts, and fishes which are generally included under the head of Game. Books on Natural History cover such a vast number of subjects that their writers necessarily find it impossible to deal with each in a really comprehensive manner; and it is not within the scope of such works exhaustively to discuss the animals described in the light of objects of sport. Books on sport, again, seldom treat at length of the Natural History of the creatures which are shot or otherwise taken; and, so far as the Editor is aware, in no book hitherto published on Natural History or Sport has information been given as to the best methods of turning the contents of the bag to account. 999273 Each volume of the present Series is, therefore, devoted to a bird, beast, or fish-except that in the present book two birds are included. Their origin is traced, their birth and breeding described, every known method of circumventing and killing them not omitting the methods employed by the poacher-is explained with special regard to modern developments, and they are only left when on the table in the most appetising forms which the delicate science of cookery has discovered. ALFRED E. T. WATSON. |