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The British Bird Book. Edited by F. B. Kirkman, B.A. 

 Illustrated in colour and monochrome. 4to. Vol. I., 

 pp. XX + 156. (T. C. & E. C. Jack.) 10s. 6d. net. 



The principal object of this work, which is to be issued in 

 twelve " sections," is to " bring together from every source, 

 foreign and native, all the available information of any im- 

 portance concerning the habits of British birds." Various 

 writers are employed in this task, and each is solely responsible 

 for the work under his signature — consequently we have 

 varied styles of treatment and, more important, a varying 

 quality of discrimination. 



The plan of the work is to give for each species what are here 

 termed "Preliminary classified notes," which provide a brief 

 description of the bird and short accounts of its distribution, 

 migration, nest and eggs, food and song-period. A family 

 having been dealt with thus in brief, a full account is given in 

 one chapter of the habits of all its members. Great advantages 

 are claimed for this plan, but although we approve of the idea 

 of the " classified notes," which are much in the style of the 

 volumes in AIUti's Naturalists' Library, the discussion of the 

 habits of a number of species together is a plan which must 

 surely fail. However good the promised index may be, it 

 will always be necessary to read through many pages in order 

 to learn what are the habits of any one species. In this section, 

 for example, seventy-three pages are devoted in one long 

 chapter without a break to the " Finches," and we note, as 

 an example, that the Crossbill is referred to in the first page 

 and in the last, as well as in many in between. 



The " classified " notes, for which Messrs. Kirkman, W. P. 

 Pycraft, A. L. Thomson and the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain are 

 responsible, seem to be well and carefully done so far as they 

 go, but the information is not so detailed as, for instance, in 

 so compressed a work as Saunders' Manual. The descriptions 

 seem to us too meagre and general to enable anyone who did 

 not know the bird to identify it satisfactorily, while the accounts 

 of distribution are often inadequate, as, for example, in the 

 Twite, whose distribution is local and requires detailed treat- 

 ment, but is here described in too general a way ; and, 

 incidentally, the bird is said to be absent from the east of 

 England. The descriptions of the nests and eggs are, 

 however, much more thoroughly done. 



