110 REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



last volume. We have seen some drawings by Mr. Swainson which we greatly 

 prefer to any of the plates in his then published works ; we suspected, as 

 indeed we have elsewhere noticed, that the failing of the latter lay in the 

 engraving; and the plates in the present volume (beautifully engraved by 

 Lizabs) confirm us in that opinion. We shall now proceed to quote from the 

 introduction ; and when our readers are informed that, had it not been for the 

 increase of letter-press in our current number, we should not have been enabled 

 to extract so freely from our author's pages, we feel assured they will not be dis- 

 posed to regret the omission of the woodcuts, in lieu of which the additional pages 

 are given: — 



" Of all the zoological provinces into which our globe is divided, Africa is the most unexplored. 

 The land thirsty and desolate — the people savage and idolatrous — the climate burning and pes- 

 tilential ; we trace all that can impede and resist civilization, and the prosecution of research. 

 The interior of Africa is like the fabled Upas-tree of Java ; and of nearly all those adventurous 

 spirits, who have set out to gather its fruits, nothing remains but their whitened bones. The 

 Zoology of Africa is even less known than its Geography. Its coasts, at least throughout its cir- 

 cumference, have been traced out by navigators ; but the Natural History of only two or three 

 insignificant parts, when compared to the whole, has been investigated ; while of the vast regions 

 intervening between these distant spots, we know little or nothing. The Ornithology of Egypt 

 was well explored in the direction of the march of the French army, by the inimitable Savignv, 

 and those learned men who accompanied it ; Ruppell has brought some striking novelties from 

 Nubia, and recently from Abyssinia ; while some of the birds of the latter country, collected and 

 sent to England by the late Mr. Salt, have been imperfectly mentioned.* These, in short, are 

 the only gleanings that have been made in the vast extent of three-fourths of this wide-spreading 

 continent ; for even the shores bordering upon the Mediterranean, and the fertile and well-wooded 

 provinces of Asia Minor, have been quite neglected, notwithstanding the interest they possess in 

 determining the limits of the three regions which there meet, namely, Europe, Africa, and Asia. 

 It is only in the southern extremity, long inhabited by Europeans, that anything effective has 

 been yet accomplished. The name of Le Vaillant takes the lead in this quarter, and the six 

 splendid volumes that he has given to the world, record how great was the success that attended 

 his exertions in our favourite science. Yet, notwithstanding his numerous discoveries, many 

 thers remained to be made; and the three zoologists who subsequently chose this field for their 

 exertions, Lichtenstein, Burchell, and Smith, added materially to our list of S. African birds. 

 The latter naturalist, more especially, has already transmitted to this country many new and 

 interesting species." — p. 92. 



From the above observations, our readers will perceive that Mr. Swainson's 

 task is far from an easy one. He has had but but little to guide him save his 

 own researches. This volume is, therefore, in a great measure, original, and cer- 

 tainly it is not the worse for that. Our author then proceeds to impart an idea 

 of the Ornithology of North Africa, by giving a rapid and masterly sketch of 

 that of the northern and southern extremities. We extract the following para- 

 graphs, as interesting and valuable in themselves, and as furnishing some idea of 



* " Unfortunately nearly all these species have been mixed up with the old genera, so that they become. 

 m useles* to modern science at if they had not been discovered." 



