REVIBW. 755 



wise provision which will help sportsmen to keep on the look-out. The 

 Woodcock and five species of Snipes follow, and the book closes with an ap- 

 pendix describing two species of Pheasants which have been found within 

 Indian limits for the first time, since Part I was published. 



Where so much is excellent it is unpleasant to find fault, but there is what 

 we cannot help characterising as an inexcusable fault in this book, and it 

 springs from Mr. Oates's unbridled originality. He has attained a position 

 in his subject which entitles him to be original and his views will always 

 command respect ; but there is a time and a place for everything, and a little 

 reflection ought surely to have convinced him that this book did not offer a 

 suitable occasion for innovation. It is not addressed to specialists in orni- 

 thology, but to intelligent sportsmen who like to identify the birds they 

 shoot. Those who wish to do more than this are recommended by Mr. Gates 

 himself, in the Introduction, to study Dr. Blanford's volume in " The Fauna 

 of British India." Then how did he faiJ to see the propriety of sinking his 

 personal opinions and following the nomenclature and arrangement adopted 

 by Dr. Blanford, whose book, whether we agree with it in all points or not, 

 must, for years to come, be the text book of all ornithologists in India ? Of 

 the forty-three species in this little volume, no less than ten appear under 

 names different from those given to them in " The Fauna of British India." 

 Even the trivial English names to which we have all got accustomed are 

 changed to suit Mr. Oates's personal notions. The Mallard is the Wild Duck, 

 the Whistling Teal the Small Whistling Duck, and so on. But the worst 

 example is the Spotted-billed Duck, which is put by Blanford, as by all 

 previous writers, into the genus Anas, with the Mallard. Mr. Oates separates 

 it altogether, brackets it with Hume's Oceanic Teal (which he calls The 

 Andaman Duck) and invents a new <7c?m« for the accommodation of these 

 two. But in his group of True Ducks he includes, with the Mallard, such dis- 

 similar birds as the common Teal, the Pintail and even the Shoveller. 



