Notices of Books. 9789 



many other species, both of inamruals and birds." — Introduction, p. 2, 

 et seq. 



This long extract seemed necessary to show how completely Mr. 

 Gould has mastered his subject. I must reserve for a future occasion, 

 when the work shall be complete, those further extracts which, relating 

 to individual species, will be read with still more interest. Mr. Gould 

 is one of those who do not rest content with a mere description of 

 beak, feet and feathers ; he goes into the life-history of each species, 

 and gives every particular he can collect of the living bird: how many 

 years I have been urging on the attention of my fellow-labourers to 

 direct their studies in this particular direction, the readers of the 

 'Zoologist' know full well: how much of obloquy and what strange 

 rebuffs it has brought me, they also know. It is one of the rewards of 

 perseverance to see the best and ablest taking the path I have always 

 pointed out as the right path, not, indeed, because 1 have done so, but 

 because it is, in their own convictions, the only path that leads to a 

 true knowledge of the science they desire to teach. Not a month now 

 passes but we find some life-history of a bird or insect carefully 

 worked out by those who, had they ventured on this course twenty 

 years ago, would have met with the most determined opposition, and 

 probably received solemn reproof from the chair of some learned 

 society. Mr. Gould is now doing this life-history business on a much 

 more extensive scale in a work I shall shortly have occasion to notice 

 more at large, the 'Birds of Britain,' a work highly creditable to the 

 country which produces it, and one to which I heartily wish the most 

 complete and entire success. But I must not allow a mere digression 

 in advocacy of a principle to withdraw my attention from the more 

 immediate subject of this notice, 'The Handbook of the Birds of Aus- 

 tralia,' a work which has long been wanting ; a work for which I have 

 been repeatedly asked, and one which, when complete, will supply a 

 necessity in the literalm'e of our Australian colonies that has been felt 

 by every naturalist whose interest or inclination has attracted him 

 to that antipodean Britain. On the 2nd of December the second 

 volume is to be issued, and then the work will be complete. It is not 

 only my duty but my pleasure most cordially to recommend it to the 

 readers of the ' Zoologist.' 



Edward Newman. 



