364 



NATURE 



[Sept. 2, 1875 



The great bulk of the evidence, in fact, on this part of 

 the question is to the same effect ; and it has not been 

 neutrahsed, in the judgment of the Commissioners, by other 

 views expressed by a small number of distinguished wit- 

 nesses. 



Amongst the latter Dr. A. W. Williamson thinks that 

 the development of schools would be preferable to the 

 establishment of laboratories. His views however do not 

 seem to be fully matured ; the following extract from his 

 evidence showing that though more in favour than per- 

 haps anyone else of equal authority, of combining school 

 instruction with original research, he still perceives that 

 some independent provision for the latter might be desir- 

 able. He says : — 



"At the same time it is quite possible that, in excep- 

 tional cases, research might with advantage be carried on 

 in separate places ; but I should always view with regret, 

 as a waste of resources, the separation of that higher work 

 of research from the more humble work of teaching, which 

 naturally belongs to it. They help one another, and I 

 think that each would lose from being separated from the 

 other ; still, in some cases, it might possibly be advisable." 



Dr. Siemens, on the other hand, apprehends that the 

 establishment of Government laboratories, which, amongst 

 other functions, should be accessible to private workers, 

 might cause disappointment to some who might not be 

 able to gain access to them, and that there might be 

 favouritism and want of discrimination in the dispensing 

 of the privileges in question. 



Dr. Burdon Sanderson would rather see increased faci- 

 lities given to the great schools of medicine for the pro- 

 secution of physiological research, than laboratories of 

 an independent character established. He questions 

 whether we have at present a sufficient number of trained 

 workers to use establishments of the latter kind ; whilst 

 Lord Salisbury is doubtful whether by any moderate 

 expenditure of funds we could provide an expensive class 

 of scientific instruments of all kinds for all the persons 

 who might be inclined to use them. 



The Commissioners, after fairly balancing the views laid 

 before them, sum up this question in their final conclu- 

 sions, as follows : — 



" More complete means are urgently required for scien- 

 tific investigations in connection with certain Govern- 

 ment departments ; and physical as well as other labora- 

 tories and apparatus for such investigations ought to 

 be provided." 



{To be continued.) 



IRBY'S BIRDS OF GIBRALTAR 

 The Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar. By Lieut.- 



Col. L, Howard L. Irby, F.Z.S., &c. (London : R. H. 



Porter, 6, Tcnterden Street ; Dulau and Co., Soho 



Square, 1875.) 

 T_T ERCULES, as in our schooldays we used to be told, 

 — -- once took the trouble of cleaving asunder the 

 isthmus which in his time, whenever that was, joined 

 Europe and Africa. Colonel Irby has been at the pains of 

 reuniting the two continents, not indeed actually, tut for 

 the purposes of his work ; and has thus undone, so far as 

 ornithology is concerned, the labour of the demigod. 

 Though we certainly have no fault to find with the 

 exploit which gave the waters of the Atlantic access to 



the Mediterranean basin, and fully admit the advantage 

 which has thereby accrued to most European nations, 

 and to our own in particular, it must be confessed that we 

 deem more highly the feat of our modern hero than the 

 prowess of him of antiquity. 



It is now some years since all authorities have recog- 

 nised the fact that, if socially Africa begins, as the sati- 

 rical statesman said, at the Pyrenees, Europe does not 

 biologically end at the Strait of Gibraltar ; and the readers 

 of Nature do not need reminding that between the 

 animal and vegetable products of either side of that 

 narrow channel there is little essential difference. Thus 

 the southern part of Andalucia and the northern part of 

 Morocco form a very homogeneous district to come under 

 the survey of an observant ornithologist perched upon the 

 rocky heights of " Old Gib." Such an observant ornitho- 

 logist Col. Irby has proved himself to be, as might indeed 

 have been expected of him, when' we remember that he 

 was one of the few officers of the now ancient Crimean 

 time who was sufficiently undisturbed by war's alarms to 

 follow his pursuits over the steppes of the Tauric 

 Chersonese, and again, when called not long after to 

 India, in days yet pre-Jerdonian, did not intermit his 

 occupations in Oudh and Kumaon for all that rebellion, 

 if not something more, was still rife in those districts. 



We have seldom had the pleasure of reviewing a more 

 engaging and more unpretending book than that which is 

 now before us. It is by one who shows himself in almost 

 every page to be a thorough field-naturalist, and a field- 

 naturalist of the best kind. Cherishing with pardonable 

 pride, as a man should do, his own observations, he can 

 yet believe that those of others may likewise have some 

 merit, and thus he gives us an admirable account of the 

 place of his choice, though, as he modestly remarks, 

 "there is ample room for anyone with energy to work 

 out a great deal more information on the birds of the 

 Straits." Nearly all that he has to say about those of the 

 Spanish side is from his own personal knowledge, acquired 

 during a more or less prolonged stay at "the Rock," 

 between February 1868 and May 1872, and again from 

 February to May 1874, but including in this time only 

 one summer. " For the first three years of my residence 

 at Gibraltar," he says, " I was quartered with my regi- 

 ment, the remaining time being passed there chiefly with 

 a view to ornithological pursuits, from time to time 

 making excursions, generally of about a fortnight's dura- 

 tion, to some part or other within the districts above 

 mentioned, but chiefly confining my attentions to the 

 country within a day's journey of Gibraltar." The obser- 

 vations on the Moorish birds are in great measure culled 

 from the manuscript of the late Frangois Favier, a French 

 collector well-known to many ornithologists in England, 

 who died in 1867 after a residence of more than thirty 

 years at Tangier. This manuscript our author secured 

 at a high price,* to find indeed, " amidst a mass of bad 

 grammar, bad spelling, and worse writing, which cost 

 many hours to decipher, that it did not contain so much 

 information as I had reason to anticipate, a good deal of 

 the matter having been copied from other authors ; " and, 

 we may add, not copied with much discrimination. 



The remaining materials of which the Colonel has 



* This manuscript, or possibly an older one of which it is a corrected 

 copy, was seen at Tangier in 1844 by Wolley. Colonel Irby has lately pre- 

 sented it to the Zoological Museum of the University of Cambridge. 



