460 Recently published Ornithological Works, 



88. Pidsley and Macpherson on the Birds of Devon. 



[The Birds of Devonshire. By William E. H. Pidsley. Edited, with 

 an Introduction and short Memoir of the late John Gatcombe, by H. 

 A. Macpherson, M.A. With map and coloured plate. 8vo. London and 

 Exeter: 1891.] 



The outside of this work is embellished by a reproduction 

 in gold of Mr. Lodge's beautiful illustration of the Goshawk, 

 drawn expressly for Mr, Saunders's ' Illustrated Manual of 

 British Birds.' Although, as we understand, substantial 

 recompense was made to the publishers, the motive for this 

 appropriation is not very obvious, inasmuch as the Goshawk 

 is not included among the birds of Devon. Turning to the 

 inside, we find a coloured frontispiece, by Mr. Keulemans, of 

 a Buff- backed Heron in breeding-plumage, but seeing that 

 Montagu's Devonian specimen — still in theBritisliMuseum — 

 is in winter dress, an exact portrait of the only well authenti- 

 cated British example would have been preferable. We 

 cannot say how much worse the text would have been with- 

 out the intervention of the Rev. H. A. Macpherson, but even 

 his editorship has not availed to make a satisfactory work 

 out of the odds and ends from * The Zoologist ' and other 

 works, strung together by Mr. Pidsley. The treatment of 

 many species is somewhat meagre, and, while we commend 

 the author's discretion respecting the breeding-haunts of 

 the Chough, there can be no reason for similar reticence as 

 to a celebrated nesting-place of Cormorants in North Devon, 

 visible for miles round. More also might well have been 

 said of the ancient colony of Gannets on Lundy Island. In 

 the fourth edition of ' Yarrell' a specimen of the Buff-breasted 

 Sandpiper was recorded as having been shot on the above- 

 named island, and as being in the collection of Dr. 

 Woodforde, near Taunton, where numbers of ornithologists 

 have seen it. Yet Mr. Pidsley ignores this, substituting a 

 notice of a supposed specimen shot near Kingsbridge in 

 1857, which is set down in Mr. Harting's ' Handbook of 

 British Birds' as a young Machetes pugnax. The notes by 

 the editor, and his memoir of that excellent ornithologist, 

 the late John Gatcombe, form the redeeming feature of this 

 work. 



