I 



OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY. 91 



expunging the marvellous story of the fifteen frost-bound kites and 

 the roosting fog (for, according to the literal construction of the 

 lucid sentence wherein the " extraordinary capture" is recorded, the 

 fog, — and not the unlucky birds, — is described as roosting*), we 

 devoutly wish that the Journal may reach a fourth editiofi. Mr. 

 Knappe must verily have been dreaming when he committed to 

 paper the " confused reminiscence" of this wonderful event. Greater 

 men than the author of the Journal have, however, sometimes 

 been caught napping: aliquando dormitat Homerus, — Homer some- 

 times nods. !Mr. ]Mudie, with his two hastily-compiled duodecimo 

 volumes of The British Naturalist, — the second sadly inferior to its 

 predecessor, in style ard matter; and Mr. Jesse, with his modest and 

 unpretending, but really instructive Series of Gleanings if Natura 

 History, — the second published during the present year, — are the 

 last authors whose writings we shall, in this paragraph, be called 

 upon to notice. 



At the close of a retrospect so long and, perad venture, uninter- 

 esting, we must content ourselves with a mere enumeration of the 

 principal Periodical Publications^ from which valuable information 

 may be gleaned on the subject of British Ornithology. These are 

 the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ; 

 Transactions of the Linncean Society ; Memoirs (f the Wernerian 

 Natural History Society ; Sowerby's British Miscellany — an inte- 

 resting work which, commenced in 1804, did not, unfortunately, 

 outlive the twelfth number; the Zoological Journal; Loudon's 

 ably-conducted Magazine of Natural History ; Rennie's Field Na- 

 turalist's Magazine; the Zoological Magazine; and the Analyst, 

 our own very spirited and promising emanation of the provincial 

 press! Rennie's work, the early numbers of which, consisting prin- 

 cipally of translations, or mutilated extracts, from foreign or British 



* *' Roosting^ one winter evening, on some very lohy elms, afoff came on 

 during the night, which froze early in the morning and fastened the feet of 

 the poor kites so firmly to the boughs, that some adventurous youths brought 

 down, I think, fifteen of them so secured!" — Journal of a Naturalist: Third 

 Edition, p. 226. The congregation of the kites on this distressing occasion, 

 appears to us to have been little less extraordinary than the fact of their 

 capture: for, as far as our observation extends, the British Milvus is a bird of 

 solitary habits. Only on some very rare occasions, during the last thirty-six 

 years, have we seen two kites, — and never more than two — in company. 



