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About The Book : But it is of course the pheasants and their allies that are the peculiar glory of Indian sporting birds, and though at present they play a very insignificant part in sport compared to their importance in Europe, systematic protection in the future ought ultimately to render them at least the equals of the water and marsh birds in this connection. Our Indian Empire is beyond comparison the richest of regions in these birds, and is indeed the metropolis of the family, including all the finest groups, except the turkeys, true grouse, and guinea-fowls. Sporting birds are not only of interest to sportsmen, but to naturalists they are not surpassed in interest by any other groups on account of the frequent points of interest in their habits, and the unrivalled beauty of plumage which many of them display. The visitations of the migratory species fluctuations of the commoner kinds and occurrences of the rarer ones are also well worthy of scientific study, and much has been learnt in these particulars since the publication of Hume and Marshall's valuable work, which has of course been largely indented on in the present one, as have also the valuable publications of Mr. E, C. Stuart Baker and other contributors to the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. The scientific names used are those of the "Fauna of British India" bird volumes, now the standard work on general Indian ornithology, and where a species does not occur in these the naming of the "British Museum Catalogue of Birds" has been followed. Where the scientific name on the plate differs from these the fact has been indicated. About The Author : Frank Finn (1868-1932) was an English ornithologist.Finn was born in Maidstone and educated at Maidstone Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. He went on a collecting expedition to East Africa in 1892, and became First Assistant Superintendent of the Indian Museum, Calcutta in 1894, and Deputy Superintendent from 1895 to 1903. He then returned to England, and was editor of the Avicultural Magazine in 1909–10. Finn was a prolific author, his works including Garden and Aviary Birds of India, How to Know the Indian Ducks (1901), The Birds of Calcutta (1901), How to Know the Indian Waders (1906), Ornithological and other Oddities (1907), The Making of Species (1909, with Douglas Dewar), Eggs and Nests of British Birds (1910) and Indian Sporting Birds (1915). He also edited Robert A. Sterndale's book on the mammals of India and Ceylon and brought out a new and abridged edition titled Sterndale's Mammalia of India (1929), which included an appendix on reptiles. Cover of Birds of our Country (1912) by Finn and E. Kay Robinson The weaver bird Ploceus megarhynchus was originally described from a specimen collected by A. O. Hume from Kaladhungi near Nainital in 1869. It was rediscovered near Calcutta by Finn, and E. C. Stuart Baker called it Finn's Weaver in the second edition of the Fauna of British India (1925).