300 REVIEW. 



Birds of Britain. By J. Lewis Bonhote, M.A., F.L.S., 

 F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. With 100 illustrations in colour, 

 selected bv H. E. Dresser from his " Birds of Europe." 

 xii. + 405 pp. A. & C. Black. £1 net. 



In judging this book it is only fair to consider first for what 

 object it was Avritten. There is nothing novel either in its 

 form or matter, and the author has evidently spent little time 

 over it, since much of the ordinary information is incomplete 

 and out-of-date. A few examples will suffice : — ^The Orphean 

 Warbler has been recorded four times instead of twice ; the 

 Barred W^arbler two " dozen " rather than a " dozen" times ; 

 the sexes in the Dartford Warbler cannot be correctly 

 described as being alike ; the Siskin is a well-known breeding 

 species in many parts of Ireland, and is not practically confined 

 to Scotland. There are many such mistakes and omissions 

 through the book. Mr, Bonhote's " English " is not always 

 quite clear. Here is a sentence: — "These so-called 'cocks' 

 nests ' are used, however, as roosting-places, and if the eggs be 

 destroyed, they may be lined and used as their home for a 

 second clutch." And this is another : — " Their food consists 

 of worms, slugs, snails and other insects, as well as grain and 

 seeds, so that it is practically omnivorous." (The italics are 

 not the author's.) 



We cannot accuse Mr. Bonhote of having undertaken this 

 work for the sake of telling us what he knows of our birds, for 

 we have no doubt at all that he knows much more than he 

 here pretends. We must therefore fall back upon the coloured 

 plates as the raison d'etre of the book. As far as they go they 

 are, in the main, satisfactory. Many of them are excellent 

 reproductions of Mr. Keuleman's originals ; soine, as one might 

 expect, are unsatisfactory, such as the Mistle Thrush, Robin, 

 and Moorhen ; while others are bad, such as Leach's Petrel, 

 which, by the way, is incorrectly lettered as the left-hand 

 figure in the plate. They seem to have been " selected" with 

 a view to their falling evenly through the book. — at least we 

 can discover no other basis for the selection. If we ask why 

 the Blue-headed Wagtail has been chosen instead of the 

 typical British Yellow Wagtail, the Mealy instead of the 

 Lesser Redpoll, and are told that it is more useful to illustrate 

 the less well-known species, then why was not the Siskin 

 figured rather than the Greenfinch, or the Wood-Lark rather 

 than the Sky-Lark ? There seems no good pui'pose in 

 producing yet another book on British birds which has as its 

 sole novelty coloured representations of only one hundred and 

 eight species. 



