i895. SOME NEW BOOKS. 207 



cannot he draw his water and seed to his cage by a simple 

 mechanical contrivance ? and so he delights the populace as do the 

 performing elephant and the contortionist." This is poor stuff, and 

 unattractive. But such passages are the exception. The account of the 

 author's rencontre with an osprey, given at p. 192, is perfectly delightful, 

 and may be read with pleasure many times. Here, too, is a pretty 

 little idyll of the ringed plover. " In April, as you walk by the sea, 

 bordered by the shifting sand dunes, fringed with marram, fortalices 

 that protect the flat land from the sea, you will come across these 

 birds feeding in the pools left by the tide on the shifting shore ; and if 

 you leave the beach and wander over to wind-sculptured galleries, 

 decorated with dry marram roots, you may in some cosy hollow, where 

 the gravel lies thick upon thorn bushes, come upon the ringed plover's 

 eggs, placed on the finer stones. There are generally three of these 

 eggs [this is not our experience] , and they are difficult to see, even 

 when pointed out to you by more experienced eyes ; but nowhere are 

 they common in this district. You will always, too, find a bit of sea- 

 weed near the eggs. Later in the year, too, when the marsh- 

 mowers' voices sound over the sand-hills, you may find the 

 stone runner's eggs, for they rear two broods in a season. 

 As the sun gains power, and the bright hot days of July beat down 

 upon the gleaming sand-hills, you will, as you wander by the marram- 

 fringed sea, come across little flocks of these pretty birds flying from 

 pool to pool feeding, calling as they rise and fly down the beach 

 before you, alighting fanwise on the yellow sands. That is the time to 

 shoot them, for they make a capital dish, and taste nearly as sweet 

 as a snipe (p. 268)." Before we take leave of our author, mention 

 must be made of the numerous illustrations which have been, so 

 happily devised to secure the popularity of this dainty book. Per- 

 sonally, we must confess to a preference for the tiny vignettes of 

 birds' nests, many of them based on photographs taken in situ ; they 

 have been selected judiciously, and are fairly distinct in detail. The 

 full-page plates are less satisfactory, being based apparently on photo- 

 graphs of stuffed birds ; but with the exception of the sand grouse (a 

 bird which our author has never seen in life, and had better by far 

 have omitted from his text), they are certain to be received with 

 favour. H. A. Macpherson. 



Plankton Studies on Lake Mendota. 



The Vertical Distribution of the Pelagic Crustacea during July, 1S94. 

 E. A. Birge, Professor of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, assisted by O. A, 

 Olson and H. P. Harder. From the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of 

 Sciences, Arts, and Letters, vol. x. Issued June, 1S95. 



This is an elaborate report on a laborious experiment. Lake 

 Mendota, in Wisconsin, has an extent of about six miles by four, 

 with a greatest depth of about eighty feet. Of the Crustacea 

 captured during July, nearly two-thirds consisted of Diaptomns 

 oregonensis, Lilljeborg. Three species of Cyclops supplied nearly one- 

 third, and the balance was made up by two species of Daphnia 

 (curiously distinct in vertical distribution) and one or two other 

 entomostraca. Nearly 50 per cent, of the whole number were taken 

 in the first ten feet from the surface, 30 per cent, in the second ten, 

 and over 15 per cent, in the third, leaving a scattered few for the 

 remaining depths. In October, however, " as soon as the temperature 

 of the lake became uniform from top to bottom, the Crustacea 

 became pretty uniformly distributed, showing an arrangement wholly 



