2414 The Zoologist — January, 1871. 



he could only adhere to the original plan by cutting out portions 

 of his descriptions in this second volume, and thus sacrificing the 

 uniformity of plan. There is much reason in this ; and yet I cannot 

 help observing that much saving of space might have been effected 

 by the omission of matter that was not absolutely essential to 

 ensure uniformity, and indeed not absolutely germane to the matter 

 in hand : I would, for instance, have suggested the entire omission 

 of such passages as the account of ihe creamcolourcd courser 

 (pp. 48 — 51), a bird that has never been obtained in Norfolk, and 

 one that has scarcely any claim to a place in the British list : its 

 omission would consequently have been regarded as a matter of 

 course, while its presence in some degree seems a departure from 

 that uniformity which it is the author's avowed object to maintain. 

 In maldng these objections I have a double motive— ;^rs/, the 

 success of Mr. Stevenson's undertaking, and therefore his own 

 advantage; and secondly, the interest of his subscribers, who have 

 been induced to take the work on the understanding it was to be 

 completed in two volumes, and at a cost of twenty shillings: to 

 myself who receive the work gratuitously, through the kindness of 

 Mr. Stevenson, this is no personal objection, but to a large circle 

 of subscribers, to whom the work is not offered gratuitously, and 

 to whom its i)ossession is all but a positive necessity, it must 

 appear a grievance : but enough of this. 



The second volume begins with the bustard and ends with the 

 phalaropes. The bustard has been connected, in name at least, 

 with the county of Norfolk ever since the first notice of Ornithology 

 within the compass of the United Kingdom. How pleasant are 

 our boyish recollections of the fables of coursing bustards with 

 greyhounds — so exquisitely embodied by Bewick that one is hardly 

 able to imagine that he had been clothing a palpable fiction in the 

 garb of reality ! wo have never possessed an artist who could so 

 charmingly give apparent reality to the creations of his teeming 

 brain. Concerning the bustard, Mr. Stevenson, notwithstanding 

 the mass of information he has collected, leaves several points of 

 interest in the domestic economy of the bird undecided : he has 

 been unable to ascertain with certainty whether it is monogamous 

 or polygamous, and whether the female lays two eggs or more. In 

 this country, where the bustard, when it appears, is pursued with as 

 much ferocity as if it were a "dragon of Wantley," these problems 

 will never be solved, but surely in Spain, where as Lord Lilibrd says 



