496 Recently published Ornithological Works. 



114. Headley on the Structure and Life of Birds. 



[The Structure and Life of Birds. By F. W. Headley, M.A., F.Z.S. 

 8vo. London : Macmillan & Co., 1895.] 



Mr. F. W. Headley may be congratulated on having struck 

 the liappy mean between excessive aridity and a too super- 

 ficial treatment of his siibject in the volume before us ; it is 

 at once sound as to anatomical fact and pleasant reading, a 

 combination which, though happily far from rare now- 

 adays, is still by no means universal. In this book the 

 bird is considered — and not unreasonably — mainly from 

 the point of view of a flying animal ; but Mr. Headley does 

 not neglect the other aspects of scientific ornithology. He 

 deals — perhaps a little too briefly — with the evidence of the 

 ancestry and gradual evolution of birds, availing himself 

 here, as elsewhere, of the most recent sources of information ; 

 and towards the end is a sketch of the current theories of 

 protective coloration, sexual selection, and instinct, so far as 

 they bear upon the particular group of animals. In his 

 summaries Mr. Headley is judicial, and not urged by any 

 desire to push a favourite theory or theories ; while in this 

 book, as in several upon other branches of natural history that 

 have recently appeared, we find a healthy reaction from the 

 irritating " cock-sureness " of a decade since, which argues 

 well for the advance of our science. We know of no book, 

 at any rate of no modern book, which covers precisely the 

 ground of Mr. Headley^s manual ; it strengthens a decidedly 

 weak point in ornithological literature, and this fact, coupled 

 with the excellence of the illustrations, should ensure for it 

 a wide circulation. 



115. Herman on Bird-Migration in Hungary. 



[Die Elemente des Vogelziiges in Ungarn bis 1891. Verfasst von Otto 

 Herman. 4to. Budapest, 1895. Zweiter Intern. Orn. Congr. Budapest, 



1891.] 



Mr. Herman has favoured us with a copy of his dissertation 

 on the migration of birds, which we commend to those 

 amongst us who take an interest in this still somewhat 

 mysterious branch of our subject. After a resume, of the 



