1912. . Reviews. 17 



REVIEWS. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC BIRD-BOOKS. 



The Home-Life of the Spoonbill, the Stork and some Herons : Pliotographed 

 and described by Bentley Beetham, F.G.S. With },2 Plates. 

 London : Witherb}- & Co. Price 5s. net. 



The Life of the Common Gull told in Photographs : by C. Rubow. Trans- 

 lated from the Danish, with ilUistrations, London : Witherby & Co. 

 Price 15 6d. net. 



The Young Ornithologist : a guide to the Haunts, Homes, and Habits 

 of British Birds, by W. Percival Westell, F.L.S., M.B.O.U. With 

 a frontispiece in colours, and 65 photographic illustrations. London : 

 Methuen & Co. Price 5s. 



The number of illustrated bird-books to which the still-growing popu- 

 larity of the camera has given rise is an alarming feature in every year's 

 list of natural history publications. Mr. Bentley Bectham's " Home Life 

 of the Spoonbill, the Stork, and some Herons " is, however well above the 

 average of its class. The 32 plates form the sole raison d'etre of the 

 volume ; but they exhibit scenes from the life -history of the four species 

 dealt with — the Spoonbill, White Stork, Common Heron, and Purple Heron, 

 which an ordinary iield -student would in most cases have no chance of 

 observing for himself. The only bird of the four that breeds in Ireland is 

 the Common Heron, and the few pages devoted by Mr. Beetham to its 

 nesting habits are not devoid of interest. 



A less ambitious little book is the translation from the Danish of Carl 

 Rubow^'s " Life of the Common Gull told in photographs." In this case a 

 majority of the photographs, admirably executed though they are, re- 

 present the bird in attitudes that may be matter of every -day observation 

 in any district where Lams canus is more or less resident. The pages are 

 pleasant to turn over, some of them vividly recalling picturesque scenes of 

 rural life ; but one cannot help reflecting that booklets of this kind might 

 be multiplied ad infinitiim with little benefit to science, while the dis- 

 advantages attendant on such multiplication are obvious. 



Of Mr. Westell's book it is superfluous to say that the photographs with 

 which it is profusely illustrated are — with a few exceptions — excellent, 

 and that without them the barrenness of the book, even as a help to the 

 youngest ornithologist, would be transparent to any one. Mr. Westell aims 

 at being popular, but apparently thinks that to attain this end it will 

 suffice to be unsystematic. He claims as a special feature of his work 

 the arrangement of our common birds in sections corresponding with their 

 environment — e.g., " Birds of the Garden," " Birds of the Country Lane," 

 " Birds of the Woodland," &c., &c. There arc a score of other ways in 

 which birds might be quite as suggestively arranged, and if each of these 

 were to be made the foundation for a new beginner's handbook where should 

 we end ? As a matter of fact, many of the birds dealt with by Mr. Westell 

 might have fitted with equal appropriateness into other chapters than 



