114 Recently published Oiviithological Works. 



montanellus, besides other discoveries summarized in the last 

 chapter of the volume. We have no hesitation in expressing 

 our opinion that but very few naturalists that any nation 

 has produced could have carried out successfully such expe- 

 ditions as those of Mr. Seebohm to the Petchora and Yenesay, 

 and have turned the results to such excellent account. 



41. Seebohm' s 'British Birds and their Eggs' 



[A History of British Birds, with Coloured Illustrations of their Eggs. 

 By Henry Seebohm. Loudon : Porter. 1882. Part I.] 



Mr, Seebohm's work will be known to most of our readers 

 already ; but the commencement of such an undertaking 

 should not pass unchronicled in the pages of ' The Ibis.' 

 Oology, it is true, as Mr. Seebohm tells us in his prospectus, 

 has been much neglected of late years — at all events the 

 scientific aspect of it; and Hewitson''s works being out of 

 print and out of date, it was quite time that another British 

 Oology should take its place. Some naturalists may consider 

 nests and eggs beneath their notice ; but we agree with the 

 author of this work that the " real history of a bird is its life- 

 history. The deepest interest attaches to every thing that 

 reveals the little mind, however feebly it may be developed, 

 which lies behind the feathers.^' 



" The habits of the bird during the breeding-season, at the 

 two periods of migration, and in winter, its mode of flight 

 and of progression on the ground, in the trees, or on the 

 water, its song, and its various call- and alarm-notes, its food 

 and the mode of procuring it at different seasons of the year, 

 its migrations, the dates of arrival and departure, the routes 

 it chooses and the winter-quarters it selects, and, above all, 

 every particular respecting its breeding — when it begins to 

 build, how many broods it rears in the season, the place it 

 selects in which to build its nest, the materials it uses for the 

 purpose, the number of eggs it lays, the variation in the 

 colour, size, and shape — all these particulars are its real 

 history.'^ 



Such, then, are the particulars which Mr. Seebohm will 

 especially record in the present work ; and, as his friends are 



