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NATURE 



[Dec. 26, 1889 



brother, Charles Gates. The collections were worked 

 out by different naturalists, and the whole results em- 

 bodied in appendices which were, moreover, thoroughly 

 well illustrated. Scarcely had the book appeared and 

 met with a cordial appreciation from the public, when a 

 fire at the publishers' destroyed the whole of the unsold 

 copies ; and now, after a lapse of some years, Frank Oates's 

 brother and faithful biographer, Charles Gates, has 

 brought out a second edition. Although the necessity of 

 residing abroad has prevented the latter from finishing 

 his labour of love before the present year, the work has 

 lost nothing in consequence. The narrative must always 

 remain of value as a simple record of a naturalist's 

 journey, and the maps of the route are laid down with a 

 fidelity and minuteness not to be exceeded if the traveller 

 had been on a cycling tour instead of in the wilds of 

 Matabele Land, while the lapse of time has enabled the 

 authors of the various appendices to give additional 

 information, to correct errors, and generally to bring their 

 work up to date. Several species undetermined in the 

 first edition have now been identified and described, new 

 plates have been added, and the results as now given to 

 the public by Mr. Charles Gates form a very material 

 and valuable contribution to our knowledge of the natural 

 history of Southern Africa, with the development of which 

 the name of Frank Gates will be for ever connected. All 

 the authors of the various appendices — the late Prof. 

 Rolleston (to whose memoir Mr. Hatchett Jackson, of 

 the Gxford Museum, has added some further information), 

 Prof. Westwood, Mr. Distant, Mr. Glliff, and Mr. Rolfe 

 — seem to have been actuated by a desire to work out 

 the collections intrusted to them for description with the 

 utmost care ; and the present writer can only say that the 

 writing of the ornithological portion of the volume was 

 not only a pleasing task, but took the form of an absolute 

 duty to do justice to the memory of the traveller, and to 

 aid Mr. Charles Gates in his fraternal enthusiasm for his 

 brother's fame. Would that every traveller in the Dark 

 Continent attached as much importance to its natural 

 history as did Frank Gates, and that the work of each 

 one was edited by a loving friend, possessed of a desire 

 to place on record the scientific results of the expedition, 

 as has been done in the present work, so that volumes of 

 travel, important as they are, might be rendered still 

 more valuable by biological appendices such as are to be 

 found in Gates's " Matabele Land." 



Mr. F. H. Waterhouse, the well-known Librarian of the 

 Zoological Society, has just issued a very useful book, 

 which supplies a great want. The splendid library under 

 his charge has given him the opportunity of personally 

 verifying his references, and many inaccuracies which 

 had been copied from one author to another are herein 

 set right. He has applied himself so diligently to his 

 task, that we believe that about 500 names, of which the 

 origin was obscure, have been traced by the industrious 

 author to their original source, and this fact alone should 

 commend the work to the attention of every working 

 ornithologist. It should be mentioned, however, that 

 Mr. Waterhouse does not pretend to be a practical 

 ornithologist, and he has been dependent to a great extent 

 upon the Zoological Record for recent additions. As the 

 volume for 1887 appeared only while the present work 

 was going through the press, several new genera proposed 



in that year do not find a place in Mr. Waterhouse's 

 book, and therefore the student who interleaves his copy 

 must begin with the Record of 1887 if he wishes to have a 

 complete " catalogue " of ornithological generic names. 



Gf the making of county lists of birds there is appar- 

 ently no end, and " a good job too ! " Little by little, en- 

 thusiastic observers are compiling ornithological lists for 

 the different counties of the British Islands, and by these 

 means alone can we hope to obtain a thoroughly accurate 

 knowledge of the distribution of the birds of Great 

 Britain. Mr. G. V. Aplin has long been known to us as 

 an excellent observer, and we hope that the success of his 

 first work, the results of several years of assiduous labour, 

 will encourage him to still more ambitious efforts. The 

 somewhat irregular shape of the county of Gxfordshire, 

 and its generally narrow diameter, preclude the anticipa- 

 tion of a very varied avifauna ; but the record of 242 

 species for the district is by no means bad, and some very 

 interesting notes are given, the principal rarity being the 

 Alpine- Chough, of which the only British occurrence has 

 taken place in Gxfordshire, and of which a good plate, by 

 Mr. S. L. Moseley, is given. Gne of the most inviting 

 features of Mr. Aplin's book is its conciseness. In the 

 capital introduction he gives a very complete account 

 of the configuration of the county and its natural 

 features, all of which can be easily studied with the aid of 

 the excellent map which accompanies the work. 



A more ambitious volume is Mr. Muirhead's " Birds of 

 Berwickshire," which is got up in a Bewickian style, as 

 a book matured in such close proximity to Northumber- 

 land should be. Mr. Muirhead's book is a complete 

 exemplification of that better style of county record 

 which has been the order of the day during recent years, 

 when a sober statement of facts of distribution and habits 

 has taken the place of strenuous efforts to record rare, and 

 often impossible, visitants. After an introduction which 

 deals with the physical features of the county, aided by 

 a very clear map, the author gives an account of the 

 birds, from the Thrushes to the end of the Accipitres. 

 The accounts of these birds not only contain ample, yet 

 concise, information, but are interspersed with poetry, of 

 a Scottish and local flavour, which successfully combats 

 any notion of dulness, while the folk-lore of the district 

 appears to have special attractions for the author. In 

 some instances, notably that of the Rook, very full de- 

 tails of the breeding-haunts are given in tabular form. 

 It is interesting to note how, on the border-lands, some 

 species have increased in numbers, and have gradually 

 extended their range towards Scotland. The illustrations 

 of nests are drawn by Mrs. Muirhead, and very good 

 they are ; and the book is replete with woodcuts by Mr. 

 John Blair, aided by some excellent reproductions of etch- 

 ings by W. D. M'Kay, R.S.A., and other well-known 

 artists. We trust that in the second volume Mr. Muir- 

 head may be tempted to give us a few details respecting 

 some of the places illustrated in the text, that his readers 

 may share the evident pleasure with which he has illus- 

 trated some of the interesting localities of Berwickshire. 



Dr. W. T. Greene's little work, "The Birds in my 

 Garden," is an entertaining idyll of a London suburb. 

 Many of the author's experiences agree with our own, 

 and such a book as the present is just the one to en- 

 courage a love for the birds which are still to be seen in 



