Bibliographical Notices. 219 
which dates and localities were given, and the scrupulous exactness 
with which he acknowledged to all his correspondents his obligation 
for the facts they had communicated. The same trait of character is 
apparent throughout the present volumes. In fact, he modestly re- 
marks in the preface, “that the work should rather be considered 
that of Irish ornithologists generally than of the individual whose 
name appears on the title-page.” 
To one who takes up a volume merely for the purpose of amuse- 
ment, and who, in the words of Sterne, is ‘‘ pleased with a book he 
knows not why and cares not wherefore,” the detailed enumeration 
of dates, names and localities will no doubt be irksome, although 
even to such a reader, the work, replete as it is with varied anecdote, 
cannot fail to be attractive. But to those who read with a higher 
aim and for a loftier purpose, such details will assume a different 
aspect ; and those whose range of ornithological reading is the most 
extended will most prize this positive information, and will draw from 
it oft-times an inference, perhaps a generalization, which but for such 
well-attested facts, they would not feel warranted in doing. 
There is another light in which these details, though detracting 
to some extent from the popular character of the work, are even 
more valuable. They vouch for the fidelity of this record of the 
Birds of Ireland, as at present known by one who has spent a large 
portion of his life in their investigation. Fifty years hence, if any 
writer should take up the same subject, the present work will afford 
him a firm basis from which to start. Taking its record as true at 
this time, he will compare it with what he then finds around him, and 
note the changes that have taken place. Such changes are continually 
in progress, as evidenced in the present volumes. In the preface to 
the first, we have a very striking example of the extent to which 
birds are influenced by the labours of man :— 
“It is interesting to observe how birds are affected by the opera- 
tions of man. I have remarked this particularly at one locality near 
Belfast, situated 500 feet above the sea, and backed by hills rising to 
800 feet. Marshy ground, the abode of little else than the snipe, 
became drained, and that species was consequently expelled. As 
cultivation advanced, the numerous species of small birds attendant 
on it became visitors, and plantations soon made them inhabitants of 
the place. The land-rail soon haunted the meadows ; the quail and 
the partridge the fields of grain. A pond, covering less than an acre of 
ground, tempted annually for the first few years a pair of the graceful 
and handsome sandpipers (Totanus hypoleucos), which, with their 
brood, appeared at the end of July or beginning of August, on their 
way to the sea-side from their breeding haunt. This was in a moor 
about a mile distant, where a pair annually bred until driven away by 
drainage rendering it unsuitable. The pond was supplied by streams 
descending from the mountains through wild and rocky glens, the 
favourite haunt of the water-ouzel, which visited its margin daily 
throughout the year. When the willows planted at the water’s edge 
