NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. wih 
“Knots are taken in nets along the shores near Fossdyke in great 
numbers during winter ; but they disappear in the spring.”* 
More follows onthe Short-eared Owl and the Cressi heronry, 
but nothing that is novel, and we need not quote further. 
Early in the present century Montagu made a tour through 
Lincolnshire, with the special object of studying the natural 
history of the Ruff, and though he says little or nothing of the 
Fens generally, the account of that species given in his ‘ Supple- 
ment’ will always remain a classic passage to the ornithologist, 
and must be well known to our readers. It is indeed greatly to be 
regretted that he and Pennant had not more imitators. Numerous 
collectors no doubt visited one part or another of the Fen country, 
and some of them were able observers; but, alas! whether orni- 
thologists or entomologists, they have left very scant records of 
what they saw. ‘These records, however, are well worth hunting 
up, and since our authors have not been at this trouble, there is 
an opening for some Fenland faunist here to do good work. 
The desire to lay before our readers these overlooked passages, 
which Messrs. Miller and Skertchly might well have introduced 
into their work, has led us to such a length that we find ourselves 
compelled to be very brief in our criticisms of it; but in what we 
have said, and in what remains for us to say, we strictly limit 
ourselves to the scope of this present journal, and so we at once 
dismiss the archeology, the history and antiquities, the geology, 
the meteorology, and the botany of this bulky volume. All these 
subjects may be admirably treated for anything we know to the 
contrary, though the geological teaching laid down has been 
declared by a contemporary (‘ Nature,’ Xviil., p. 514) to be some- 
what questionable, if not actually heretical. We cannot even 
review the entomological portion, and we must confine ourselves 
to that part which has to do with Vertebrates—the most inte- 
resting probably to the readers of ‘The Zoologist.’ This then 
* Gough, in his edition of Camden’s ‘ Britannia,’ inserts a condensed version of 
this interesting description, and the few writers who have ever alluded to it at all 
have generally credited him with it as the result of his own observation, if they have 
not laid it to Camden. There can be no doubt that the authorship is due to Pennant, 
who indeed tells us (Lit. Life, p. 37) that to Gough he communicated several of his 
manuscript journals, and moreover mentions that returning from his third visit to 
Lincolnshire he passed a day with Gough at Enfield (ibid. p. 24). Gough was a 
respectable topographer and antiquarian, but no naturalist. He, however, showed 
his good sense by incorporating into his work these remarkable passages. 
