236 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



work is interspersed occasionally with notices of other 

 animals, but the amiable author appears to have paid most 

 attention to the feathered tribes. The " Natural History 

 of Selborne " has passed through a great many editions ; 

 Rennie's contains notes by Herbert, Sweet, Rennie, and 

 Mitford, and should be in the hands of every one the 

 general reader no less than the professed naturalist. All 

 scientific detail is here avoided, and indeed White probably 

 knew very few of the Linnaean names, as we frequently meet 

 with such appellations as " Passer arundinaceus" " Regulus 

 non cristatus" etc. The book consists of a series of letters 

 addressed to Pennant and Daines Barrington. 



Then there is Thomas Pennant, the first three volumes of 

 whose " British Zoology " can hardly be spared from our 

 shelves, though the arrangement (of 1781) is rather out of 

 date to-day. Side by side with him are Buffon's works, and 

 the pleasant chapters of Wilson and Waterton. The latter 

 was almost the first amongst naturalists to place the study 

 of birds in their native state before their arrangements in 

 cabinets and museum shelves. He invented a system of 

 taxidermy which, like some ancient Egyptian arts, became 

 extinct with its inventor; but any one who would know 

 what a happy valley of bird life may be formed, even in 

 this northern climate, should read the account of his English 

 home and the wonders he performed there in taming and 

 acclimatizing. 



Macgillivray prepared an excellent " Manual of British 

 Birds," and Selby's "Illustrations of British Ornitho- 

 logy " are often quoted. These were, at the time, the most 

 masterly works, on the whole, that had appeared on the birds 

 of Britain. The first edition was .on the system of Temminck, 

 with one or two improvements, as, for instance, the removing 

 from the genus Sylvia of Latham the common and gold- 

 crested wren. The descriptions of habits, nidification, etc., 

 are sufficiently full for .a systematic work, and always 

 correct. The plates are all drawn and coloured from Nature, 



