62 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



paragraph is: "This bird has often been mistaken for the Golden 

 Eagle." So it is obvious that the Ullswater birds could not have 

 been Ospreys. Mr. Macpherson's notices of the past and present 

 status of the Harriers, Kite, Buzzards, Peregrine, Merlin, Heron, 

 Bittern, Shoveller, Tufted Duck and AVoodcock, are very pleasant 

 reading, and contain an immense amount of information. The 

 Dotterel never seems to have been a common nester, even in the 

 wildest parts of Lakeland, although " trips " on passage have from 

 time immemorial visited the highest ranges of fells, and these were, 

 before the passing of the Wild Birds' Act, annually shot down and 

 destroyed for the sake of their feathers, used in tying " flies." 



Mr. Macpherson, we think, completely fails to prove the former 

 existence of the Ptarmigan in the mountains about Keswick, his 

 argument being chiefly based on the former existence of a single ex- 

 ample in a local museum, but without any label or document to state 

 the locality it was obtained from. The illustrations in the volume 

 include excellent coloured plates of the Isabelline Wheatear and 

 Frigate Petrel, and several others from photographs very fairly exe- 

 cuted, interesting also from the local scenery they depict. 



Space will not allow us any further, much as we should have 

 liked to do so, to follow Mr. Macpherson in his many pleasant pages 

 descriptive of the haunts and habits of beast, bird, and fish. Some 

 of his chapters are charmingly written, and if the merits of this work 

 were left to depend on his antiquarian researches it would in this 

 respect alone be a valuable addition to zoological literature, both 

 local and general. 



BRITISH FUNGUS FLORA. By George Massee, Vol. I. (George 

 Bell and Sons.) 



In our last issue we briefly referred to the announcement, in 

 Grevillea, of the early appearance of this work. The first volume 

 has now been published, and an estimate can thus be formed of 

 the place which the new Flora will occupy in British Mycology. 



Those familiar with the classifications in use in previous works 

 on the whole subject of British Fungi will probably enough find them- 

 selves a little embarrassed by the arrangement of the groups in Mr. 

 Massee's scheme. This commences with the Gastromycetes, and 

 passes on to the Hymenomycetes, in which the usual order of treat 

 ment is reversed, the succession being from the Tremellinea to the 

 Agaricima. Of the latter the present volume includes only the 

 Melanospora and the Porphyrosporce^ leaving a very large part to 

 follow in the second volume. The diagnoses, alike of the species, 

 of the genera, and of the higher groups, are careful and clear ; and 

 the additional remarks that follow the diagnoses and give the " eye- 

 marks " and points of special interest show familiarity with the works 

 of previous writers as well as, where opportunity permitted, with the 

 fungi themselves in the living state. These remarks are often of 

 great interest and value, not only to the beginner, but also to the 



