OP BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY. 97 



birds, and twenty-seven of their eggs; but as six of the former 

 represent merely varieties of sex and age, twenty-nine distinct spe- 

 cimens only have hitherto been given. At this rate of progression, 

 it will require nearly sixty numbers for the delineation of the whole 

 of the British birds. A few lines of description, at the foot of eacli 

 engraving excepted, no letter-press accompanies these numbers ; 

 which, if the author would put into full requisition his organs of 

 colour and comparison^ and bestow adequate time and labour on the 

 pictorial department of his subject, will, when completed, form an 

 interesting and valuable addition to the ornithological literature or 

 rather, iconography of the British islands. 



Of a Selection of British Birds, from Drawings by C. L. E. Per- 

 rott, the First Part only has yet reached us. It contains five coloured 

 engravings of birds, — that of the domestic Cock, P has ianus Gallus, 

 uncommonly bold, animated, and faithful, and by far the best. It 

 is, yet, somewhat unfortunate, that Mrs. Perrott should have com- 

 menced her Illustration of British Ornithology with the exhibition 

 of a bird of notoriously Asiatic origin, and consequently, however 

 long naturalized, only a domesticated alien on British ground. 



This, however, is an oversight of little moment. The spirit in 

 which the enterprize has been conceived, and thus fat executed, 

 would suffice to atone for a multitude of errors and defects far more 

 glaring than this, or any other which we have been yet able to 

 detect in the elegant productions of Mrs. Perrott's pencil and pen. 

 It is delightful to behold a woman, of her rank in life, her intellect 

 and acquirements, filling up her leisure hours with occupations 

 such as this ; and, instead of deluging and infecting society with 

 sentimental and pestiferous trash, in the shape of novel or romance, 

 rendering one of the sweetest of the arts subservient to the diffu- 

 sion of the healthful and soul-elevating knowledge of some of 

 the most splendid and interesting works of God's creation. We, 

 " Scribes of the Analyst," are too deeply smitten with a reve- 

 rence for the purer and loftier graces of the female character; 

 animated by too enthusiastic an admiration of its gifts, its vir- 

 tues, and its excellencies, — ^by a spirit too manly and chivalrous, 

 in everything which regards the interests and the feelings of en- 

 lightened woman, to visit with the asperities of criticism, a work 



October, 1835. — vol. hi. no. xiii. h. 



