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REVIEW. 



Field Ohseyvations on British Birds. By the late F. M. 

 Ogilvie. Edited by H. Balfour. 228 pp. Portrait 

 and illustrations. io| ins.X7 ^^^- London, 1920. 

 When Mr. F. M. Ogilvie died somewhat unexpectedly in 

 1918, his published notes and observations were strangely 

 few for so careful and conscientious a worker. This is, no 

 doubt, partly accounted for by the fact that for some time 

 past he had been accumulating material for a book on 

 Suffolk ornithology, but apparently the work was not 

 sufhciently advanced to justify its publication, though it 

 is to be hoped that it will not be lost to science altogether. 

 The present book represents the substance of a series of 

 lectures delivered to the Ashmolean Society of Oxford 

 between the years 1902 and 1916, and Mr. H. Balfour has 

 done good service in preparing them for the press. 



The subjects of the eight lectures are as follows : The 

 Commoner Waders ; Gannets and Cormorants ; Common 

 and French Partridges ; Common Snipe ; Some Characteristic 

 Birds of the Suffolk Moorlands ; Leaves from a Shooter's 

 Diary ; British Wild Geese ; and the Food of our Commoner 

 Falconidae. 



It will be seen at once that a very large share of the book 

 is devoted to ornithology from the point of view of the game 

 preserver and shooting man, but the value of the book lies 

 in the fact that, though himself a keen shot, Mr. Ogilvie could 

 and did treat the problems involved in a perfectly fair and 

 unbiased spirit, and was always ready to admit reliable 

 evidence on either side. 



Under these circumstances we need hardly say that the 

 writer's opinions must be treated with respect, for few men 

 have studied these questions more carefully and thoroughly. 

 Thus the question of the food of our Raptorial birds was always 

 of the greatest interest to him, and the actual records of 

 stomach contents are a valuable contribution to our still 

 too scanty literature on the subject. 



As the earliest of these lectures was delivered nearly twenty 

 years ago, it is obvious that many of the statements are 

 already out of date, and a certain amount of editorial revision 

 has become necessary. Work of this kind, if done at all, 

 should be thorough, and we think that here the Editor is 

 occasionally at fault. Thus, in 1903, it was quite natural 

 for Mr. Ogilvie to say, while speaking of the Gannet, " There 

 is Iwt one breeding station round the English coast, Lundy 



