2734 The Zoologist — September, 1871. 



getting out of my depth, I will endeavour to make my readers 

 acquainted v>ith the ornithic phase of adventure, and will consider 

 the bird-books one by one, and first the ' Birds of Europe' : it is 

 proposed to publish this in monthly numbers at 12s. 6d. each ; 

 twelve times 12.9. 6d. = £7 10s., and for this we are promised 

 a hundred figures and a hundred descriptions per annum ; thus, as 

 there are six hundred birds to be described and figured, it follows 

 that the entire work will cost, at the retail price, £45, and that this 

 payment will be spread over six years. It is pleasing to have such 

 an agreeable mode of disposing of surplus revenue. I heartily 

 welcome the work, not only on this account, but because the 

 diffusion of more general and more extensive knowledge in re 

 Ortiithologica, will be the inevitable result of such a produc- 

 tion. 



And now for the geographical limits of the work and the 

 meaning of the word "palajarctic," which to some of my birds- 

 nesting and birdstuffing readers will sound rather formidable ; but 

 the authors' own interpretation agreeably tones down this im- 

 pression : here it is. 



" The present work is intended to embrace a more extended area than 

 has hitherto been admitted by any writer on European birds ; for every 

 previous author has insisted on recognizing as a natural boundary the 

 political limits of the various European states, and the result has been that 

 every general work on the subject in the hands of the public at the present 

 day only imperfectly supplies an idea of the ornithological status of the 

 continent we inhabit. It is the intention of the authors to draw the limits 

 of their ornithological boundaries as follows, subject, of course to any 

 modifications which a more extended study or the future researches of 

 naturalists may induce, viz.: — on the western side, to include all the 

 countries bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, embracing also Greenland, 

 Iceland, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands ; the southern limits 

 to include the countries of Northern Africa north of the true desert, where 

 the Desert and Ethiopian Faunse commence ; on the east the line of 

 demarcation will include Palestine to the westward of the Jordan valley, 

 whence an imaginary line will be drawn to the Caspian Sea below the 

 Caucasus to the foot of the Ural Mountains, thus including the whole of 

 Turkey in Asia and Russia west of the Ural. The authors have therefore 

 given this book the supplementary title of the ' Birds of the Western 

 Palaearctic Region,' as the above boundaries are generally admitted by 

 zoologists of repute to constitute most natural limits to the Fauna of this 

 portion of the globe." 



