68 BRITISH BIRDS. 



father no more and steps into his shoes. Birds are creatures 

 of habit, as Mr. Howard demonstrates, and if the males come 

 back to the same territory then the females do also, and if so, 

 surely the same two birds are mated as long as both hve. 

 Would not this account for the apparent absence of choice 

 by the female of any particular male (see Grasshopper- Warbler, 

 p. 14) ? Is there always an absence of choice, or has it so 

 happened that Mr. Howard has watched previously mated 

 birds, and not those which have never before been mated ? 

 We hope that Mr. Howard, with his great powers of observa- 

 tion, will give us in a future instalment the result of his 

 observations on this point, for it seems to us most unUkely 

 that birds choose a new mate each spring. 



We have space only to allude to some of the many other 

 interesting facts so pleasantly recorded in these pages. A 

 curious feature in the courting display of these three species 

 is that the male frequently picks up a leaf or stick and holds 

 it in its beak while following the female. The females do 

 most of the building of the nest and the feeding of the young ; 

 the faeces of the young are sometimes sw^allowed by the parent 

 bird, as they are almost invariably by the Thrushes ; the 

 song of the Grasshopper- Warbler almost ceases after pairing 

 is over ; the nesthngs of the same species leave the nest when 

 only a few days old, and some time before they are able to 



There is so much that is good in this book that we are 

 somewhat unwilling to criticize. We must, however, express 

 the opinion that the general plan of the work appears to us 

 to be unwise. The descriptions of the plumages are most un- 

 satisfactory in that they add Uttle or nothing to our knowledge, 

 which is a great pity, for we know little of the sequences 

 of the plumages of these birds, and the moults they go through. 

 Then in species such as the Yellow-browed Warbler, mth 

 which presumably the author has no acquaintance, no account 

 of habits is given. Thus the work is incomplete, and in no 

 sense a monograph. It seems to us a pity that the author 

 did not confine himself to a description of the habits only 

 (with the plates illustrating them) of those species which he 

 had observed. The w^ork as at present planned is expensive. 

 The valuable original observations ought to have been made 

 accessible to all ornithologists, and might have been so 

 without any loss to science by the omission of what is not 

 valuable. If we may make a further criticism, it is that the 

 parts should appear at shorter intervals. Part I. was pub- 

 lished in February, 1907, Part II. in March, 1908. 



H.F.W. 



