164 The Irish Naturalist, [June, 



except for a tiny flash of cinnamon under the chin. No canary can 

 compare with the golden hue of my Wagtail — golden head, golden tail, 

 golden back, gold beneath — from breast to tip of tail pure gold" 

 (pp. 218-19.) 



Wagtails {Motacilla Rait) with more than their share of yellow have 

 been seen before ; but not five together. The unkind suspicion, it is to 

 be feared, will linger, that a group of Grey Wagtails, disporting them- 

 selves in the golden sunlight, got so suffused with splendour as for once, 

 in Mr. Fulcher's eyes, to seem * golden" instead of " green." There is 

 little to be said against the substitution of one imaginary tint for 

 another. 



Even after the Golden Wagtail, the full page illustration (p. 241) 

 entitled " Merlin and its Prey," is, at first sight, calculated to startle, the 

 prey being an adult Mallard ! But in fact the falcon figured is a 

 Peregrine. The Gannet (p. 141) is called " the whitest member of the 

 family of Geese," and a contrast is instituted (p. 149) between this bird's 

 plain relations and the "handsome family" to which the Cormorant 

 belongs. Our author has evidently no suspicion that Cormorant and 

 Gannet belong to one and the same family. There are several reasons 

 why the Grasshopper -Warbler is hard to see, but it is imaginative 

 writing to include among them such a one as Mr. Fulcher's (p. 71): 

 *' In the first place, the sound (of its song) is so like that of its namesake, 

 the Grasshopper's, that it is hard to say which is which." " Once heard," 

 Macgillivray more accurately says of the same performance, it "can 

 never be afterwards mistaken for the sound of a grasshopper or cricket." 

 Many other observations are made by our author with which it is diffi- 

 cult to agree, but with reservations on some such points as those already 

 particularized, his book deserves praise ; and the taste with which its 

 publishers have brought it out is also strongly to be commended. Of 

 the full-page illustrations, that of the Great Grey Shrike (p. 223) is per- 

 haps the most life-like. Many of the wood-cuts, e.g. " Young Larks " 

 (p. 15), " Golden Plover in summer" (p. 30), " Curlews " (p. 199), " Snipe " 

 (p. 193), and " lyittle Stint " (p. 202) — are very pleasing. 



" C.B.M. 



