236 BRITISH BIRDS. 



for his shameful raid on these birds, since if the skins are 

 wanted for a scientific purpose they can easily be obtained 

 from abroad, where the bird is common. Nor does he bring 

 forward any proof that the danger of final extermination of 

 rare breeding species by the amateur collector has been ex- 

 aggerated. Nor can we agree with him that the Ruff, Avocet, 

 Black-tailed Godwit, Black Tern, and Bittern are banished 

 for ever as breeding species, and therefore may be shot as 

 stragglers — far from it. On the shore, the mud-flats, and 

 marshes Mr. Arnold is, as it were, on his own ground, and the 

 chapters on shore-shooting are entertaining, but he would 

 have been well advised to have omitted all reference to such 

 places as the New Forest, where he has spent but a few days. 

 There is much shooting but little ornithology in the book. 

 Scientific names are omitted, and we have never heard of the 

 Lesser Black-headed Gull (c/. pp. 31 and 33). The illus- 

 trations from the author's own drawings in black and white 

 and colour are decidedly stiff and faulty in various details, 

 but we have no wish to criticise them too severely. 



Wild Life on a Norfolk Estuary. By Arthur H. Patterson : 

 with a prefatory note by Her Grace the Duchess of Bedford. 

 Illustrated. Methuen & Co. 10s. 6d. net. 



That enough material could be got together to make a book 

 — a readable book — about the bird-life of so circumscribed 

 an area as the mud-flats of Breydon Water, Great Yarmouth, 

 would have seemed to most people very improbable. Yet 

 Mr. Patterson has achieved this task, and with distinction. 

 He has had the good fortune to see, on many occasions, small 

 parties of such interesting birds as Spoonbills and Avocets ; 

 and by dint of great patience has succeeded in keeping these 

 under observation for many hours during several days. So 

 recently as 1905 for example, he fell in with a flock of no less 

 than nine Avocets. They swam, he says, "with the buoyancy 

 of Tufted Ducks." Much of their food, we are rather surprised 

 to find, they procured by that curious half -diving action so 

 characteristic of the Mallard ; \\here the head and forepart of 

 the body are submerged while the tail is kept vertical, above 

 water, by the action of the legs. This is a book, in short, 

 which is full of most interesting matter, not only as regards 

 rarities, but also concerning the commoner species, and the 

 earlier days when this rendezvous was even more favoured 

 by birds than now. The illustrations have been drawn by 

 the author himself, in pen-and-ink, and of their kind are 

 excellent. 



