/85 Recentb/ published Ornithological Works. 



small outlying portions of Haddington and Midlothian in 

 the north, and a goodly slice of Northumberland, with the 

 Fame Is^lands, in the south. The invasion of English soil 

 is not great, and on a broad view of the matter seems quite 

 justifiable ; undoubtedly it gives a finish to the survey, and 

 adds much to its interest. At the same time it is a ])oint 

 that will have to be borne in mind in any comparison of the 

 fauna of South Scotland with other sections of the country. 



The author being a native of the district, bora and 

 brought up at Scremerston near Berwick-on-Twced, and, 

 though latterly non-resident, always in close touch with it 

 and its naturalists, and possessing at the same time other 

 essential qualifications for the task, it was but fitting that the 

 Tweed volume should have fallen to the lot of Mr, A. H. 

 Evans. That the result is one of the best " Faunas '' of the 

 series goes without saying. A feature is the exhaustive 

 manner in which the voluminous literature has evidently 

 been ransacked, and the careful citation of the records. 

 CJertainly Mr. Evans's fellow-workers in the district have no 

 cause to complain of his treatment of them. But while 

 generously fair in his recognition of the work of others, it 

 is a question whether by the studied avoidance of the first 

 personal pronoun he has been equally fair to himself. 



Following an Introduction of fourteen pages, in which 

 short biographical notices of deceased Border naturalists and 

 a Bibliography — which, by the Avay, does not include the 

 author's own paper on the Birds of the Melrose District, 

 publislied in the ' Scottish Naturalist' for 1891 — are given, 

 there comes a clear and orderly description, in twenty-five 

 pages, of the '^ physical features " of the area, section by 

 section, from the faunistic point of view. Tiie district, it may 

 here be remarked, is regarded as occupying a distinctly inter- 

 mediate faunal position between the North and the South of 

 Great Britain. From this chapter we pass to the main part of 

 the book, namely, the systematic account of the Vertebrates 

 (excluding the Fishes) that have been recorded from the area. 

 Tie Class Aves, with which alone we are here concerned, is 



