494 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
just issued, detracts not a little from its utility. With this 
addition sportsmen will have a capital vade mecum on the art of 
Wildfowling ; but it is to be hoped that the provisions of the Act 
for protecting the birds during the close-time may be as rigidly 
observed as the directions here given for shooting them in their 
proper season, or before many more winters have elapsed the 
wildfowler’s occupation may be gone. 
Glimpses of Bird-Life ; pourtrayed with Pen and Pencil. By J. E. 
Hartine and L. P. Rozerr. Folio, with twenty coloured 
plates and forty-three woodcuts and initial letters. London: 
Sonnenschein & Allen. 1880. 
How few artists there are capable of accurately delineating 
bird-life is only too well known to those ornithologists who, on 
the eve of publication, have had occasion to require their services. 
A glance at any of the recently published ‘‘ Monographs” by 
members of the British Ornithologists’ Union, or at the 
‘Transactions’ or ‘ Proceedings’ of the Zoological Society, or at 
some of the more important books on Natural History which 
appear from time to time illustrated with wood engravings, 
reveals the fact that there are barely half-a-dozen such artists to 
be found in London. On the Continent, apparently, the case is 
not very different, if we may judge by the specimens of coloured 
plates and engravings which reach us from France, Holland, and 
Germany. The engravers and lithographers, as a rule, both here 
and abroad, do their work well, so well, indeed, that very often it 
could not be better; but, as a matter of course, they follow 
scrupulously and conscientiously the lines of the artist, and if 
these are faulty the whole effect is marred. The great difficulty 
is to find a zoological artist who has been able to afford the time 
to make his studies from nature; who declines to be fettered by 
the conventional outlines of predecessors, and who will put on 
paper only what he knows or believes to be correct from personal 
observation or study. 
Under these circumstances we hail with satisfaction the 
advent, to the ranks of this minority, of an artist who can produce 
such good work as that presented in the volume before us. 
M. Robert is a Frenchman who has made a special study of 
bird-life, and who has acquired the happy knack of hitting off 
