220 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



naturalists. We have now the gratification of being able to 

 congratulate Dr. Jerdon on the completion of the first volume 

 of this important undertaking, which will, we are sure, do much 

 to influence the study of our favourite science in British India. 

 Time after time have we been applied to to point out some book 

 wherein descriptions of the birds of India might be found. Time 

 after time have we been obliged to answer that no such work 

 was in existence. As Dr. Jerdon observes in his prospectus, to 

 obtain acquaintance with what had been already ascertained re- 

 specting the fauna of India, it was necessary to search through 

 the voluminous transactions of learned societies and scien- 

 tific journals ; and, excepting to a few more favourably placed, 

 even these were inaccessible. The completion of Dr. Jerdon's 

 work*, of which the first volume is now issued, will put it in 

 the power of every one to acquire at a small expense, and in a 

 conveniently portable form, a manual of the birds of continental 

 India, sufficiently complete to serve as a guide to the field- 

 naturalist anxious to discriminate the species of birds he may 

 observe around him, and also of very great value to the student 

 as a book of reference in his cabinet. No one, we think, will 

 question Dr. Jerdon's special fitness to engage himself in his 

 present task, which will not, we may remark, be terminated 

 until not only his ' Manual of Indian Ornithology ' is completed 

 but also a whole series of similar volumes relating to the other 

 classes of Indian vertebrates. Dr. Jerdon has passed more than 

 twenty-five years in India, and has been known throughout that 

 time as an ardent cultivator of science and a frequent writer upon 

 various branches of Indian natural history. In 1839, Dr. Jerdon 

 commenced a catalogue of the birds of Southern India in the 

 ' Madras Journal of Literature and Science,^ and completed the 

 same with two supplements after several years' devotion to his 

 task. In 1844 he published a volume of ' Illustrations of Indian 



* The Birds of India; being a natural history of all the birds known to 

 inhabit continental India, with descriptions of the species, genera, famihes, 

 tribes, and orders, and a brief notice of such families as are not found in 

 India, making it a Manual of Ornithology specially adapted for India. 

 By T, C. Jerdon, Surgeon-Major, Madras Army. Vol. i. 8vo. Calcutta, 

 1862. (Loudon, Smith aud Elder.) 



