l895 . SOME NEW BOOKS. 343 



Birds and Books. 



Summer Studies of Birds and Books. By W. Warde Fowler. 8vo. Pp. 288. 

 London: Macmillan & Co. Price 6s. 



A series of unconnected but interesting essays are brought together 

 into this volume from various tributary sources. Articles from 

 magazines, papers read before natural history societies, and one 

 separate publication in pamphlet form constitute the eleven chapters 

 of which Mr. Warde Fowler's most recent book is made up. They 

 are all worth reading, some of them particularly readable. Mr. 

 Fowler dips deeper into his subject than do some ornithologists, and 

 emerges with many valuable and not easily accessible facts. These 

 are the result, not only of personal observation, but also of literary 

 research. As an Oxford man, Mr. Warde Fowler is naturally a 

 student of Aristotle ; and he presents us with a highly interesting 

 sketch of Aristotle as an ornithologist, a character in which he 

 probably is not familiar to Mr. Fowler's colleagues of the University. 

 It appears from what we are told that Aristotle was not altogether 

 irreproachable as an ornithologist. His statements are not entirely 

 the result of observation, and, as a consequence, are constantly 

 erroneous. But mingled with much error are a few pearls of some 

 price; it is interesting, for instance, to learn, rather from what is left 

 unsaid than from what is said, that in the days of the father of natural 

 history the House Martin had not yet acquired that mode of nesting 

 which has given to it its name. His observations upon the Nightingale 

 teaching its young to sing have been since confirmed. And Aristotle 

 knew three centuries before Christ, "what we moderns only learnt a 

 century ago, that a bird does not sing its own song by instinct, but 

 will sing another bird's song if the proper chance is given it." One 

 of Aristotle's weak points appears to have been colour, a defect which, 

 according to certain authorities, he shared with no less a person than 

 Homer. " Aristotle is often content with telling us that a bird is of a 

 bad colour or a good colour without troubling himself further, as if he 

 well knew that his countrymen were not gifted with an acute colour- 

 sense." Besides, as Mr. Warde Fowler remarks, the Greeks were 

 not by any means amply provided with words for the different colours, 

 let alone diverse shades of a given colour. 



Strongly though Mr. Fowler speaks in praise of Aristotle, he has 

 plenty of commendation left for Gilbert White, to whose life and 

 merits another excellent essay is devoted. In these days of un- 

 ceasing " vorlaufige Mittheilungen " and disjointed publication, it is 

 good to read how Mr. Fowler emphasizes the fact that White did not 

 print his famous book until he was close upon seventy. On the other 

 hand, though the author particularly points out that his hero was 

 "White of Selborne, not White of Oxford" he, obviously, came 

 perilously near to being as barren (intellectually) as the average 

 Oxford Don ; for he died only four years after the book was published. 

 We fear very much that the "ease and isolation, the complete absence 

 of hurry and worry " to which Mr. Fowler attributes the greatness of 

 the Natural History of Selborne, will soon cease to be attainable. 

 Brixton and Clapham prefer something more useful than a " good 

 monography of worms " ; while the author of such a monograph 

 would not be, in the opinion of a certain politician, one of those men 

 who are worth more than five hundred a year. 



The remaining essays of Mr. Fowler's volume are nearly all the 

 results of direct observation upon bird-life, while an appendix, partly 

 contributed by Mr. Pycraft, of Oxford, helps to elucidate a chapter 

 upon the song of birds. F. E. B. 



