BOOK NOTICES 63 



BOOK NOTICES. 



ESSAYS AND PHOTOGRAPHS : SOME BIRDS OF THE CANARY 

 ISLANDS AND SOUTH AFRICA. By Henry E. Harris. 92 illustra- 

 tions. (London: R. H. Porter.) Price 2 is. net. 



The application of the camera to the delineation of subjects 

 ornithological has been a marked success. Indeed, so much has 

 been accomplished through it as regards the nests and eggs of 

 British birds, that we confess that we turn to the handsome book 

 under consideration with a satisfaction that carries with it a tinre of 



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relief. Here we break new ground and are afforded peeps at nature 

 in other lands : the intermediary being a series of extremely pretty 

 and interesting pictures, chiefly of bird-life, depicting species and 

 scenes with which most of us are unfamiliar. Among many others 

 we look upon the nests and eggs of the Houbara Bustard, Cream- 

 coloured Courser, Egyptian Vulture, Secretary-bird, Hammer Kop, 

 Black-footed Penguin ; and have portraits of the Spectacled Warbler, 

 Cape Gannets, Pied Kingfisher, Spotted Eagle-Owls ; also scenes 

 of country-life in the Canaries and South Africa. The full -page 

 plates are 55 in number, and are of great excellence, and the same 

 may be said of the 206 pages of letterpress, which are, happily, just 

 what are wanted in such a book, and will be greatly appreciated. 

 The volume is in every way a most acceptable one. 



A MANUAL. OF THE BIRDS OF ICELAND. By Henry H. Slater, 

 M.A., F.Z.S., etc. (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1901.) 



This useful little volume treats shortly on the ornithology of one 

 of the most interesting regions of Europe. A knowledge of the 

 avifauna of Iceland is essential to those who study British birds, 

 because it is thence that we draw a number of the winter visitors to 

 our islands ; while not a few of those migrants of double passage 

 which traverse our shores in spring and autumn are journeying 

 between their summer haunts in that far-off N.W. land and winter 

 quarters which lie to the south of Britain. Thus we are in direct 

 touch with the ornis of that Ultima Thule of the Palasarctic Region. 



The book is designed as a manual for the use of naturalists, 

 sportsmen, and tourists who desire to know something about the 

 birds of the country. It contains a concise account of each species 

 as an Icelandic bird, together with some useful information on their 

 haunts, nesting habits, eggs, and plumage. The author has visited 

 Iceland on several occasions for the express purpose of studying its 

 avifauna ; has carried his researches far into the not inconsiderable 

 literature of his subject ; and is, in addition, a well-known and skilled 

 ornithologist. Thus the manual is the production of one who is 

 in every way thoroughly competent to furnish us with a complete 

 and accurate account of the bird-life of the island. 



