NATURE 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1874 



SAXBY'S "BIRDS OF SHETLAND" 

 The Birds of Shetland^ with Ohscrz'ahoiis on their Habits, 

 Migration, and Occasional Appearance. By the late 

 Henry L. Saxby, M.D., of Balta Sound, Unst. Edited 

 by his brother, Stephen H. Saxby, M.A. 8vo., pp. 

 398 ; eight plates. (Edinburgh : 1874.) 



JUST as no country can show such a number of works 

 on Ornithology as our own,* so no branch of our 

 fauna has received anything like the same degree of atten- 

 tion, which the existence of such works implies, as birds. 

 These works are of various grades of excellence, as might 

 naturally be expected, but there are few that do not contain 

 more or less valuable matter, and none that can be safely 

 neglected by ornithologists ; while some, as Mr. Steven- 

 son's " Birds of Norfolk," Mr. Gray's " Birds of the West 

 of Scotland," and of course Thompson's " Birds of 

 Ireland," rise to a very high order of merit. The book 

 now before us — the late Dr. Saxby's " Birds of Shetland," 

 — does not, indeed, nearly reach the standard of those 

 just named as a whole ; but in some respects it does not 

 fall far below it, because the locality of itself gives an 

 importance to the subject which no imperfections can 

 impair — and the work certainly labours under several 

 manifest and serious defects. It will be enough to 

 mention three of them. First, there is the deplorable 

 fact of the author's premature death, and the posthumous 

 publication of his bonk consequent thereupon ; for though 

 his brother has doubtless done all in his power to dis- 

 charge the duty of editor — and, let us say at once, has 

 done this very creditably — the want of an author's final 

 supervision is a severe injury to any work. Secondly, the 

 author seems to have had to depend almost entirely on 

 his own resources. In any but the very smallest district, 

 it is nearly impossible for one man to know the whole of 

 it, and this is quite impossible, even after a twenty years' 

 residence, in a group of islands like the scene of Dr. 

 Saxby's labours. Hehimself lived in the most northerly 

 of those which are inhabited, and his connection by 

 marriage with the influential family of Edmonston — 

 which has produced so many gifted members — no doubt 

 gave him unusual facilities for becoming acquainted with 

 the peculiarities of Unst ; but his professional duties in a 

 great measure tethered him to one spot, and hindered 

 him from carrying on his investigations in the more 

 southern islands as he unquestionably would have 

 liked to do. Thirdly, the author does not seem to have 

 fully appreciated what the duties of a local naturalist in 

 these days are. Twenty years ago even this book would 

 have attained for him a very high rank among his 

 brethren, but times have changed. So great is the ad- 

 vance in all branches of biology, that what then passed 

 for the best of work is now far behind the age. The 



^ Germany is of course the only one which can compare with Britain in 

 this respect ; and leaving out of consideration the difference in extent of the 

 two countries, there can be little doubt as to the side on which the numerical 

 superiority lies. It is true that in Prof. Giebel's " Thesaunis OrnithologiEe " the 

 titles of British works occupy barely si.v pages against nine~and-a-hal/ of 

 German. But the_ latter are really collected with much amount of care, 

 while the former, if not taken at haphazard, have been picked on some 

 principle of artificial selection which defies inquiry. Had the British 

 journals been examined by that learned compiler at all as closely as the 

 German, the list of papers relating to the ornitnology of the United King- 

 dom would have been more than doubled. 



Vol. XI. — No. 266 



British ornithologist has become a more highly educated 

 and better-read man than he was, and, what is more to 

 the purpose, a man of wider views. He must not only 

 know what are the general wants of his science at pre- 

 sent, the problems which require solution, but, to take a 

 good place, he must know also much mo e of what is 

 being done by his neighbours than most of our forefathers 

 in the pursuit cared to trouble themselves with. Lacking 

 such knowledge as this, he is apt to miss the bearings of 

 observations of the most interesting kind, and he is sure 

 to be tediously minute upon matters which might or 

 would have rejoiced his bird-fancying predecessors, but 

 arc of small moment to his contemporaries. 



We do not write these words without pain. Every 

 allowance must be made for the gentleman who secluded 

 himself in the most northern of the British Islands, but 

 many a man so placed would still have formed or kept 

 up such an intercourse with the centres of thought and 

 investigation as to enable him to be on a level, as to their 

 results, with the best thinkers and investigators. Shet- 

 land, nowadays, in regard to communication, is hardly 

 further removed from Edinburgh (or, for the matter of 

 that, from London) than Selborne was in those of Gilbert 

 White. Yet we find that White was in the front rank of 

 the naturalists of his time, corresponding freely, frequently 

 and on equal terms with the acknowledged heads of his 

 vocation, testing by his own experience all that he 

 learned from them, and, moreover, all that was known of 

 the labours of foreign naturalists. Maximis haud inipar, 

 he criticised alike Linnreus, Scopoli and Kramer, Ray, 

 Derham and Stillingfleet ; and his criticisms are still 

 defensible. Now, there is no evidence that Dr. Saxby 

 did anything of this kind — an examination of his book 

 gives no intimation that he was at all aware of what sub- 

 jects were moving his brother ornithologists, whether at 

 home or abroad. Most of his observations as they were 

 made were transmitted for publication to a periodical 

 which has been the delight of bird's-nesting and moth- 

 pinning schoolboys, but, except in encouraging a taste 

 for natural history among amateurs, it has been remark- 

 able for persistently checking its scientific study. We 

 do not of course blame Dr. Saxby for not occupying him- 

 self with species-splitting, nomenclature and such like 

 refinements. They are only to be indulged in with 

 profit by such as have ready access to museums 

 and libraries, and are possibly not worth half the 

 trouble that is taken about them by men who enjoy those 

 facilities. But there were numberless subjects which were 

 within his grasp, and yet are entirely overlooked by him. 

 We may instance the many contested points as to the 

 assumption of certain plumages by certain sea-fowls. A 

 keen observer so favourably situated as Dr. Saxby, one 

 would think, would have thrown some light on such 

 questions. One of them relates to the various garb in 

 which the bird, commonly known as Richardson's Skua, 

 presents itself. The species is abundant, as everyone 

 knows, in the Shetland seas ; but not a word is vouch- 

 safed to bring us nearer to an understanding of the 

 matter. We are told, indeed, that parti-coloured birds 

 and whole-coloured birds can be distinguished from the 

 time that they are in the nest ; but that much some of us 

 knew before, either from our own experience or the testi- 

 mony of others. Puzzles too, which, though perhaps 



