54 The hish Nat2iralisf.. March, 
W. Farren, F. C. R. Jourdain, and W. P. P3^craft— could have been 
written until within the past few years, during which our knowledge of 
the breeding-habits of the three species dealt with has been placed on an 
entirely new footing by the close attention paid to the first of them by 
Herr Manniche, in North-east Greenland, to the second by Mr. Edmund 
Selous in Holland, and to the third by Mr. H. B. Macpherson in the im- 
mediate vicinity of an eagle's eyrie in the heart of the Grampians. Of 
the other birds dealt with in these two parts — which cover, roughly, 
the Sandpipers and their allies, with the Orders Fulicariae, Gallinae, and 
Accipitres, and the Swans and Geese — it is unnecessary to say that there 
are many whose habits are still so imperfectly known as to afford little 
material for a work on the preserit plan. The account given of the Whitfe- 
tailed Eagle, for example, is most regrettably^ meagre ; and this is probably 
not the fault of Mr. Py craft, who admits the special interest that ought 
to attach to the study of that splendid bird, representing as it does not 
only a distinct genus, but a distinct group, " onl)- very remotely related 
to the true Eagles," and actually included by Dr. Suschkin among the 
Milvinae. 
On the subject of nuptial plumage, nuptial displays, and the battles 
fought between males in the breeding season, it is sometimes open to doubt 
whether a sufficiently clear perspective has been maintained b}- the different 
contributors. In treating of the Geese, Mr. Pjxraft gives us a good example 
of the loose language that is so common in regard to these topics. Writing 
of the Greylag, he tells us that " the competition for females among the 
bachelors occasions some great fights " ; and he adds that " the younger,, 
unmated,linehgible birds live in the vicinity of the breeding colony, but 
keep in separate flocks." But he does not state — as one would expect him 
to do if such were the case — that there is anj- ascertained disparity in 
the numbers of the sexes, or that the " unmated, ineligible birds " that 
live in separate flocks in or about the colony are all males. What is there, 
then, to prevent the defeated bachelors from finding mates when all the 
fighting is over ? The natural conclusion, it seems to us, is that the 
original fights were for possession of ground rather than exclusively " for 
females." This seems also to be the true conclusion deducible from the 
exhaustive and invaluable observations made by Mr. Edmund Selous on 
the breeding habits of the Ruff in Holland. As Mr. Jourdain (summarizing 
though not quoting the statements of Mr. Selous) puts it : — " The fully 
developed males had their own definite places on the hill, and the only 
real fighting seems to have arisen from a new comer pitching on a spot 
already appropriated." The reviewer may here add that the conduct 
of two Rutfs and two Reeves which were kept in an enclosure in the Zoo- 
logical Gardens in Dublin, last spring, was such as fully to bear out the 
conclusion' that the stronger male bird indirectly secures preference from 
the females by winning and jealoush- holding possession of a favourite 
bit of ground, which no rival is permitted to enter. 
The beauty of the coloured plates in these as in the preceding parts, is 
so great as almost to rouse in us a feeling of resentment on behalf of the 
few species which have been excluded from the favour of portraiture — 
amongst these being the White -tailed Eagle, a species surely not undeserving 
