[ 224 J 



RKVIKW. 



Guy's South of Ireland Pictorial Guide. Cork: Guy & Co., 1893. 



We have received a copy of " Guy's South of Ireland Pictorial Guide," 

 which will supply visitors with an excellent and profusely-illustrated 

 guide to the southern counties, and to Cork city and Killarney in par- 

 ticular. The most novel feature of the hand-book, and the one to which 

 we wish to draw attention, is the series of short articles on local verte- 

 brate zoology, phanerogamic botany, and mineralogy, specially contri- 

 buted by such well-know Irish naturalists as Messrs. A. G. More, F.L.S., 

 R. J. Ussher, J.P., G. H. Kinahan, M.R.I.A., and R. A. Phillips. This is 

 a department in which local guide-books are usiially lamentably defi- 

 cient, natural history being frequently altogether ignored, or if men- 

 tioned at all, being treated in a manner at once incompetent and inaccu- 

 rate. In Messrs. Guy's production, however, the botany is from the pen 

 of Mr. More, the recognised authority on the subject in Ireland, and his 

 remarks take the form of a short and interesting essay on the peculiar 

 and characteristic plants of the south and west of Ireland, and their 

 origin and distribution. Mr. Ussher supplies excellent notes on the 

 birds of the district, and Mr. More on the fresh-water fishes; Mr. Phillips 

 contributes pleasantly-written articles on the orchids and ferns, and 

 Mr. Kinahan discusses the mineralogy of the southern counties. Messrs. 

 Guy are certainly to be congratulated on having produced the first Irish 

 guide-book in which at least a portion of the natural history of the 

 district treated of is given the prominence which it deserves, and is 

 described with accuracy by competent naturalists. 



OBITUARY. 



ROBERT J. BURKITT. 



On the 3rd July, passed away at Carne Prospect, Belmullet, at the 

 advanced age of eighty-six. Dr. Robert J. Burkitt, whose life-long devo- 

 tion to ornithology may be inferred from the many references to him in 

 Thompson's work, as well as from the specimens of unexampled rarity 

 he preserved, and contributed to our museums from time to time. 

 Resident as a physician in Waterford, he there collected and preserved 

 birds with his own hands from 1830 until he left it about ten years ago, 

 all of which he obtained in the flesh from that part of Ireland, and since 

 he went to Belmullet he added to the Irish list the only recorded exam- 

 ple of the Barred Warbler. During that long period he appears to have 

 had no neighbours who sympathized in his pursuits. His generosity of 

 disposition, so well known in Waterford by his gratuitous attendance on 

 the poor, led him to bestow his Great Auk and other rarities on Trinity 

 College Museum, and it is gratifying to know that his services as a 

 naturalist, and his valuable gifts to the Museum, though long unac- 

 knowledged, were recognized by the present Board of Trinity College, 

 who, a few months since, did a graceful act towards Dr. Burkitt. 



Among the proofs of his friendship I have received, I may instance the 

 gifts of his South African Eagle Owl and Baillon's Crake, both shot near 

 Waterford, and now in the Science and Art Museum; also his set of 

 Thompson's works, rendered doubl}' precious by being interleaved with 

 letters written to him by Yarrell and Thompson. In Dr. Burkitt we have 

 lost an Irish ornithologist who was a contemporary and friend of those 

 men. Of a singular sincerity and simplicity of character, he abhorred 

 shams of every description, and could not endure to owe money. Look- 

 ing back on his long life, those closely related to him can remember no 

 variance with him. He was ever the same true-hearted man. His intel- 

 lect remained as clear as his handwriting to the last, a notice of his on 

 Wild Swans having appeared in the Ma}^ number of The Irish Naturalist. 



R. J. USSHKR. 



