Bibliographical Notices. 513 



been a labour of love. He has, however, had the inestimable ad- 

 vantage of constant correspondence, and, in latter years, of personal 

 intercourse, with Mr. Blyth, of the Asiatic Society's Museum, than 

 whom no one would have been better qualified to write such a work, 

 had his health been good and his time his own. But the constant 

 drudgery of his unassisted labours, and above twenty-one years' resi- 

 dence in Calcutta, have so far injured his health as to preclude the 

 present hope of his pubUshing a separate work. His voluminous wri- 

 tings, however — reports, notices, monographs, &c. — scattered through 

 twenty volumes of the ' Journal of the Asiatic Society ' and in various 

 English scientific periodicals, are permanent proofs of his great talents 

 and industry; and were it not for those writings and the fine col- 

 lection he has been the chief means of making in Calcutta, the 

 present work would be much more imperfect than it now is." 



Of the manner in which Dr. Jerdon has performed his task we 

 must speak in terms of high praise. The scheme of the book is 

 exactly what we think it ought to be — "A Manual of Ornithology 

 specially adapted for India," as it is announced on the title-page, 

 which, as being somewhat redundant, we have taken the liberty to 

 curtail above. To this end the Surgeon- Major prefixes an " Intro- 

 duction," containing nearly fifty pages of well-digested generalizations, 

 or, as we might almost term them, a summary of the first principles 

 of ornithology. These serve to show, if, indeed, it were necessary, 

 that our author has turned to good account the specific knowledge 

 of which the body of the book proves him to be possessed — know- 

 ledge of a kind which so many naturalists, unfortunately, seem to be 

 incapable of applying to higher purposes. But the utility of the 

 " Introduction " is not merely confined to the demonstration of this 

 fact. It is unquestionable, we think, that a book like the present, 

 though long demanded by advanced naturaUsts thoughout the world, 

 has been most needed by a multitude of persons in our mighty pro- 

 consulate — persons who know little of ornithology, though they love 

 it much, amateurs who with the aid thus opportunely afforded them 

 will ripen into ornithologists. Welcome, then, as the rains in their 

 season, will be the ' Birds of India ' to men with such tastes, thirsting 

 for information on the subject, for lack of which many of them must 

 have seen their aspirations wither like vegetation in a time of 

 drought. 



Our space will not admit of our going into details. "We must beg 

 our readers to take our word for it that we have tested the accuracy, 

 so far as we have been able, of a good many of Dr. Jerdon' s descrip- 

 tions and diagnostic characters, and we find they stand the trial ex- 

 tremely well. Much of the book consists of matter the truth of 

 which ex necessitate we cannot test, seeing that it embodies the 

 results of the author's personal experience, and we lay no claim to a 

 special knowledge of Indian ornithology. But Dr. Jerdon is ob- 

 viously an observer so carefully trained that we willingly accept 

 upon trust his statements respecting the habits, the movements, 

 in a word, all that is really meant by the history of the birds of 

 India. The greatest fault we have (o find with the book (and we 



