126 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



Robert Gray and Thomas Anderson therefore deserve our thanks 

 for telling us more about it, as they do in a little work * we 

 have lately received from them. The " Preface" we can cordially 

 recommend as containing just the sort of general information 

 which an ornithologist unacquainted with the district wants, 

 and we much wish we could make room for some extracts. As 

 it is, we can only advise our readers to study it for themselves. 

 A glance at any map of south-western Scotland will show that 

 the position and coast-line of Galloway, Carrick, and Kyle must 

 present great attractions to many birds, though certain species 

 coming from the south are tempted from their straight course 

 by the easterly trending of the Solway, and, following the rivers 

 running into that estuary, are led across the Border counties to 

 reappear on the east coast, whence they continue their voyage 

 northward. Were the authors local faunists of the narrow 

 school, we should, perhaps, be called upon to sympathize with 

 their regrets at these perversions, but being catholic-minded 

 they will no doubt, some day, pursue the truants and tell us 

 how they fare in the shires of Roxburgh, Berwick, Selkirk, and 

 Peebles — a group of counties well worth a monograph. To 

 return, however, to the district with which this book has to do, 

 we may observe that it includes the grand Ailsa Craig, which 

 has been one of the largest nurseries of sea-fowl in the United 

 Kingdom, and would be so again if its lord were not so indif- 

 ferent to the privilege of possessing a spot of such interest, 

 though, if we are not mistaken, one of the present authors has done 

 his best to convince the noble owner of the short-sighted policy 

 followed by himself and his agents — a policy which, if followed 

 everywhere, would not only extirpate certain species of the birds 

 of Ayrshire in particular, but of the birds of the air in general. 



The publication in Europe of a work on the Natural History 

 of two of the States of the American Union seems to be an in- 

 terference on the part of the Old World with the affairs of the 

 New, of the kind which the celebrated "Monroe Doctrine" was 

 particularly intended to reprobate ; yet we are sure that Dr. 



* The Birds of Ayrshire and Wigtownshire, by Robert Gbay and 

 Thomas Anderson. Glasgow : 1869. 8vo, pp. 62. 



