114 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



The Birds of Wiltshire : comprising all the Periodical and Occa- 

 sional Visitants, as well as those which are Indigenous to the 

 County. By the Rev. Alfred Charles Smith, M.A., Rector 

 of Yatesbary. 8vo, pp. 588. London: R. H. Porter; 

 and Devizes : H. F. Bull. 1887. 



Between the years 1857 and 1869 the author of the pre- 

 sent volume contributed to the pages of ' The Wiltshire Maga- 

 zine ' a series of articles on the Ornithology of Wiltshire. 

 Separate copies of these collected into a bound volume we have 

 long possessed, and frequently consulted ; but so many years 

 have elapsed since their publication, that we have often wished 

 for their republication in a revised and improved shape. Our 

 wish has at length been gratified, and we have now before us a 

 goodly volume, containing more than double the number of 

 pages which originally appeared. Upon this we think Mr. Smith 

 is to be heartily congratulated ; for although in his Preface he 

 has modestly characterized his book as " a plain account of the 

 Birds of Wiltshire, written by a Wiltshire man and for Wiltshire 

 people," it is to be hoped, and indeed expected, that it will find 

 its way far beyond the confines of the county in which it has 

 been written. 



When the author expressed a fear (Preface vii) lest he may be 

 thought to have " put forth a treatise which might have been 

 written fifty years ago," and be considered " somewhat old- 

 fashioned," he has, consciously or unconsciously, indicated one 

 of the weak points in the volume. For his views on classifica- 

 tion must be admitted to be somewhat " behind the age," and 

 his long disquisition on the structure of birds seems to us to be 

 out of place in a count)'- avifauna. On several very well- 

 known species he has written at too great a length, and on 

 others of much rarer occurrence he tells us less than might 

 well be told. But on the whole we have a very pleasantly 

 written volume, in which are noted many details respecting 

 the occurrence in Wiltshire of sundry rare British birds, which 

 cannot fail to be of interest to ornithologists generally. Some 

 of these have, perhaps, been included on too slender evidence ; 

 as, for example, the Roller, Coracias garrula (p. 293), which 



