i897] 163 



A POPULAR BIRD BOOK. 



mrds of our islands. By F. A. Fui,cher. 8vo, pp. 368. London : 



Andrew Melrose, 1897. Price, 3^. 6d, 



Such books as Mr. Fulcher's have two virtues. They present natural 

 history in an attractive guise to beginners, and they afford refreshing 

 reading to those who already love the objects they relate to. If they are 

 also somewhat unsafe guides, plenty of text-books exist to serve as 

 correctives. Mr. Fulcher is fond of his subject, and his book, which is 

 pleasantly written as well as profusely illustrated, has this claim on 

 Irish readers, that the author has made our own island the field of a 

 considerable proportion of his observations. He is even so good as to 

 proffer (we may not say present) to our Avifauna a new species of Wagtail : 

 but here, for the present, commendation comes to a halt. 



' Mr. Fulcher's chapter on the Wagtails is a very shaky piece of writing 

 It is enriched with an illustration (p. 209) said to represent the Grey 

 Wagtail, but in which a female Pied Wagtail, or else no British species, 

 is the bird figured. The author may not be answerable for this ; but he 

 strangely states (p. 219) that the three common British Wagtails — Pied, 

 Grey, and Yellow — lay eggs so much alike ** that, apart from their 

 surroundings, it is impossible to distinguish between them." One might 

 as well say a Sedge-Warbler's egg cannot be told from a Sparrow's. 

 Then Mr. Fulcher writes (p. 216) of" the yellow and olive of the wings, 

 and olive-green back" of the Grey Wagtail, and says these "give no 

 sense of greyness.'' To a common eye they give no sense of greenness, 

 the back being slaty grey, and the quill-feathers blactish. And speaking 

 of the Yellow Wagtail, whose upper surface really is olive, he says 

 (p. 217) "its plumage is very like that of the Grey Wagtail, yellow and 

 green." In truth, beyond both being yellow beneath, the plumage of 

 the two has scarcely a common feature. Notice is drawn to these details 

 as showing that either Mr. Fulcher has paid little attention to the Wag- 

 tails, or that his sense of colour is peculiar. 



We now come to our author's new Irish Wagtail, which "has no 

 scientific name, for strange to say, our leading ornithologists do not 

 seem to know it" 



" I saw it on the roof of a house in the extreme north of the wild 

 peninsular (jzV) of Inneshowen. A little flock of five of those fairy-like 

 birds had alighted, probably to rest after crossing the North Sea. Not 

 green and gold, or grey and gold, or olive and gold, as times without 

 number I am asked, but all gold, pure gold of brightest yellowest hue, 



