Recently published Ornithological Works. 115 



26. Smart on British Birds. 



[Birds on the British List : their Title to Enrolment considered, espe- 

 cially with reference to the British Ornithological \_sic] Union's List of 

 British Birds : with a few remarks upon ' Evolution,' and notes upon 

 the rarer Eggs. By the Rev. Gregory Smart, M.A. 8vo. London and 

 Preston: 188G.] 



Unless this book had been sent to us for notice,, we 

 should gladly have ignored a work in which a long series 

 of blunders commences on the very titlepage. Besides 

 being steeped in silliness^ it is often so incoherent and un- 

 intelligible in siyle^ that it is inconceivable how any one of 

 ordinary education could have written it. But gross inaccu- 

 racies in pretended quotations from authors whose names are 

 given, and whose exact words are supposed to be indicated by 

 inverted commas, are so mischievous that we cannot con- 

 scientiously leave them unexposed. Take a few refutations of 

 Mr. Smart's misstatements. Messrs. Sterland and Whitaker 

 do not say, in their ' Birds of Northamptonshire/ that Buteo 

 borealis was submitted to Mr. Gould in the flesh ; and Mr. 

 Seebohm will hardly recognize the version given of his 

 remarks on p. 10. Mr. J. H. Gurney never wrote the 

 incoherent nonsense respecting the African Buzzard attri- 

 buted to him between quotation-marks (p. 11) ; and Mr. 

 Seebohm's meaning with regard to the American Hawk Owl 

 is quite perverted by misquotation (p. 14) . The Blue Rock 

 Thrush was not " shot at Westmeath on Nov. 17th, 1866, 

 by Mr. B. Knox/^ nor by any one else, seeing that it was 

 brought from Cannes, in France ; and Professor Newton did 

 not " admit the occurrence ^' : he recorded the assertion of 

 the occurrence, which is a very different matter. Respecting 

 the reported capture of the Red-eyed Vireo in Derbyshire, 

 Mr. Smart says, " the only question seems to be whether the 

 genuine occurrence is authentic. And upon this Professor 

 Newton throws no shadow of distrust," the italics being 

 the author's. Naturally, the cautious Professor did not 

 commit himself to anything beyond the bare record of the 

 existence of such a statement ; but in this and similar cases 

 we may remember Lord Burleigh's nod. Yet even Professor 



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