6i6 



NATURE 



[February 3, 19 16 



BRITISH WARBLERS. 

 The British Warblers: a History, with Problems 

 of their Lives. By H. Eliot Howard. Illus- 

 trated by H. Gronvold. Two volumes. 

 (London : R. H. Porter, 1907^1914.) Price 

 loZ. los. net, 2 vols. 

 " T T is almost impossible to study systematically 

 X any species, no matter how common, with- 

 out continually adding to our store of knowledge 

 and noticing new facts ; and such facts may lead 

 to the solution of problems connected with the 

 mystery of life and the greater mystery of develop- 

 ment." This sentence of Mr. Howard's may seem 

 trite enough; but it comes pot amiss to British 

 ornithologists, whose energies have been mainly 

 occupied with the classification and distribution 

 of species and with the discovery of new sub- 

 species or local varieties rather than with bio- 

 logical questions. Mr. Howard's work, which 

 has been coming out in parts since 1907, has 

 certain decided advantages in comparison with 

 its predecessors, though it deals only with a few 

 species, and biologically only with about a dozen. 

 First, it is the result of most persevering watch- 

 ing, mainly at that time of the day when birds 

 are more full of life than at any other — the hours 

 immediately following sunrise — and at the time 

 of year when, from a biological point of view, 

 they are best worth watching, i.e. the months 

 from their arrival in this country to the end of 

 the breeding season. It is true that we have to 

 depend as yet largely on Mr. Howard's evidence 

 alone. But that evidence is, to my ornithological 

 feeling, not only to be trusted with confidence, 

 but extremely stimulating ; and as soon as the 

 war is over we shall have numbers of good ob- 

 servers ready to spend their early hours in the 

 woods as vigilantly as in the trenches. 



Again, Mr. Howard has not been content with 

 the collection of facts, but endeavours honestly 

 and independently to interpret them, raising and 

 discussing certain biological questions which they 

 suggest. In fact, the work is a valuable study 

 in biology. Imperfect it assuredly is, for the 

 birds treated of from close personal experience 

 are few, and Mr, Howard's experience has been 

 growing during the seven years of publication; 

 but these imperfections a,re of small moment 

 compared with the stimulus given to inquiry, 

 which has already begun to work among our 

 field ornithologists. If the main results attained 

 could be published in a small and comparatively 

 cheap volume, well thought out, and perhaps more 

 concisely and lucidly expressed than are the more 

 scientific parts of these two big volumes, the 

 benefits of the work would reach a much larger 

 circle than is possible at present. 

 NO. 2414, VOL. 96] 



There is yet another advantage possessed by 

 this book, viz., that it is illustrated by drawings 

 of the most exquisite beauty and delicacy instead 

 of by photographs. The most valuable of these, 

 i.e. those which help us to "visualise" the 

 author's observations, seem to be based on his 

 own rough sketches made during observation, 

 worked up to an artistic product with consum- 

 mate skill and good faith by Mr. Gronvold. 

 Mr. Howard is warmly to be congratulated on 

 having the courage and the means to abandon 

 the cumbrous camera for the mental impression 

 and the pencil. When you are watching little 

 creatures that creep about in dense cover, photo- 

 graphy is really impracticable ; and if you want 

 to reproduce the attitude of such small birds for 

 a third person you can do it much better if you 

 are an artist than if you are a photographer, if 

 only you have that tender feeling for the living 

 bird which gives you intense delight in all its 

 movements. 



Mr. Howard's name will always be associated 

 with what he calls the law of territory — a law 

 which Mr. J. M. Dewar has recently been suc- 

 cessfully applying in the Zoologist to the oyster- 

 catchers of the Firth of Forth. We are all 

 familiar with exemplifications of this law, and 

 the only reason why it has not been promulgated 

 before is that we have not been up early enough 

 in the morning to realise its working fully. We 

 know well enough that with the exception of the 

 swallow tribe, which find their food in the air 

 entirely, each pair of our summer migrants (and 

 many, too, of our resident species) occupies a 

 certain territory which serves as feeding-ground 

 and playground. If a railway bank is patronised 

 by whinchats, there will be a pair every hundred 

 yards or so ; along a roadside it is the same with 

 yellowhammers ; in a wood, in reeds, in osiers, 

 with various species of warblers. In such posi- 

 tions as these three last the territories may differ 

 from year to year according to the condition of 

 the cover, but the rule holds good all the same. 



Now Mr. Howard has gone far beyond this 

 elementary statement of the law. His vigils have 

 led him to the conviction that this territory is 

 of immense importance in the life of our warblers ; 

 that the desire to secure it is what hurries on the 

 males in front of the females during migration; 

 that the vigorous singing on arrival is an an- 

 nouncement of occupation, and a defiance to other 

 candidates for it; and that the bird's sense of 

 boundary is unmistakable, though it may not 

 exactly coincide with that which the observer 

 imagines it to be. (See remarks on this point on 

 p. 10 of the section on the willow warbler.) 



There may well be some doubt as to whether 



