42 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 



Keulemans or Mr. Neale. In so liuge an undertaking mistakes and omis- 

 sions are of course to be found if any one likes the invidious task of seeking 

 for them ; but many of the errors imputed to this work prove on investi- 

 gation to refer to matters of opinion rather than of fact, while many more 

 are explicable if we remember that while the work was in progress 

 Ornithology was being prosecuted with unprecedented activity, and thus 

 statements which were in accordance with the best information at the 

 beginning of the period were found to need modification before it 

 was ended. As a whole European ornithologists liave been all but 

 unanimously grateful to Mr. Dresser for the way in which he brought 

 this enormous labour to a successful end. A ^ufflement to his work is 

 now nearly finished. The late M. des Murs in 1886 completed his 

 Description des Oiseaux d'Eui-ojje (4 vols. gr. 8vo), with coloured figures of 

 the Birds and of their eggs, but it is rather a popular than a scientific 

 work. The Contrihidions a la Faune ornithologique de I'Europe Occidentale 

 of the late M. Olphe-Galliard, contained in 41 fascicules between 1884 

 and 1892, is an important work, involving a vast amount of research, and 

 composed in a highly original way. The author was well read in orni- 

 thological literature, for he had the accomplishment, rare among his 

 countrymen, of a good acquaintance with modern languages not his own, 

 and was especially observant of the doings of foreign naturalists. Yet 

 the work cannot be called wholly successful, and this chiefly, it would 

 seem, through the want of autoptical acquaintance with many of the 

 species treated, or at least with a suflicient series of specimens, whereby 

 he has been led to rely too much on the descriptions of others, with the 

 usual unsatisfactory result. Still the work fully deserves attention, and 

 nothing need be said of the author's fanciful classification, for no one is 

 likely to follow it. In 1890 Mr. Backhouse brought out a convenient 

 little Handbook of Eurojpean Birds.^ 



Coming now to works on British Birds only, the first of the present 

 century that requires remark is Montagu's Ornithological Dictionary (2 

 vols. 8vo, 1802 ; supplement 1813), the merits of which have been so 

 long and so fully acknowledged, both abroad and at home that no further 

 comment is here wanted. In 1831 Rennie bi'ought out a modified 

 edition of it (reissued in 1833), and Newman another in 1866 (reissued 

 in 1883) ; but those who wish to know the author's views should consult 

 the original. Next in order come the very inferior British Ornithology of 

 Graves (3 vols. 8vo, 1811-21 ; ed. 2, 1821), and a better work with the 

 same title by Hunt^ (3 vols. 8vo, 1815-22), published at Norwich, but 

 never finished. Then we have Selby's Illustrations of British Ornithology, 

 two folio volumes of coloured plates engraved by himself, between 1821 

 and 1833, with letterpress also in two volumes (8vo, 1825-33), a second 



^ Herr Gatke's remarkable Yogelwarte Helgoland (Braunschweig: 1891), which 

 treats of much more thau European ornithology, has been elsewhere (Migration, p. 

 562) mentioned. It remaius to say that a fair English translation by Mr. Rosenstock, 

 with a preface by Mr. Harvie-BrowTi, has appeared under the title of Heligoland 

 as an Ornitliological Observatory (Edinburgh : 1895). 



^ The text was written, I was told by the late Mr. Joseph Clarke, by R. C. 

 Coxe, who was a schoolboy when it was begun, but died in 1863 Archdeacon of 

 liindisfarne. 



