CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 119 



rare and difficult to obtain, and a large proportion of them extreme- 

 ly variable ; so that it requires no inconsiderable amount of experi- 

 ence and judgment in order to be enabled to figure typical and cha- 

 racteristic specimens. We have been much instructed by a variety 

 of interesting anecdotes interspersed through the letter-press; for 

 all which original observation the ornithologist is greatly indebted 

 to the industry and perseverance of the zealous author. A few of 

 these we shall occasionally introduce in the course of this review, 

 which will enable the reader to estimate Mr. Hewitson's talents as 

 a field naturalist. 



Plate I. (XCVIII. in the series of publication) contains two fi- 

 gures of the egg of the Common Curlew, exquisitely represented, 

 and characteristic in the extreme; yet, without wishing to be 

 deemed at all hypercritical, we could wish that one of them had 

 been coloured a trifle deeper, for they are often much darker than 

 fig. 1. We are induced to say this principally because JNIr. H. ob- 

 serves that " the two figures represent two opposite varieties, those 

 intermediate being much more frequent." We hope every natura- 

 list has often participated in the devout and heart-felt sentiment of 

 gratitude and adoration to the supreme Governor of the Universe 

 with which our author opens his brief notice of the habits of 

 this bird. " I have never traversed the lone wild heath, desert- 

 ed, except by the feathered race, and at a moment at which I have 

 felt the solitary dreariness of the scene, that the wild cry of the 

 Curlew, so much in accordance with all around me, has not 

 come like the voice of a companion to my ear, and produced a silent 

 feeling of gratitude to that Being who has thus adorned with life 

 and beauty the most sterile and least interesting of his works ; and 

 I have thought how great would be the void in the creation were 

 we deprived of this single branch of his glorious works." We are 

 more familiar with the Curlew's cry upon the sea-shore, and there 

 also does it harmonize with all around, and tranquillize and elevate 

 the mind, and lead it to hold communion with its Divine Creator ; 

 there has it often induced in us the same mood of silent and most 

 delightful contemplation, and called forth the same spontaneous 

 feeling of natural religion, which confers the very purest and most 

 exalted happiness of which our nature is susceptible. But let us 

 return to the wild haunts of our friend the Curlew. Mr. Hewit- 

 son tells us of what our own experience of the habits of this species 

 would certainly never have led us to anticipate. " Whilst in Nor- 

 way," he says, " we were much amused at what appeared to us to 

 be quite a new and unnoticed habit of the Grallalores, or Waders. 

 One day, eagerly pursuing a bird of this order, and having searched 

 in vain a marsh towards which it had flown, we were about to re- 

 linquish the pursuit when, much to our amazement, we discovered 

 it seated high above our head, on the top of a tree ; so contrary 

 was this to any of the habits of this class of birds with which we 

 were then acquainted, that we concluded that it must be a species 

 unknown to us. We afterwards found it, however, to be a practice 



