NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 471 
Sylvan Folk: Sketches of Bird and Animal Life in Britain. By 
Joon Watson. Small 8vo., pp. 286. London: Fisher 
Unwin. 1889. 
Tur title of this little book is not well chosen, the word 
folk ” being inapplicable to birds and beasts, and ‘ sylvan folk” 
being suggestive rather of fairies than of wild animals. The 
chapters (sixteen in number) deal with various matters of out- 
door observation, some of them having already appeared in print 
and being now re-published in a collected form. Here and there 
we find an interesting note called forth by the author’s experience, 
as when he tells us, in the chapter on small British mammals, 
that he has seen Shrews, ‘‘on the sides of Hellvellyn, 1500 feet 
above the sea-level” (p. 47). 
We do not quite follow Mr. Watson when he says (p. 38) that 
the Pheasant is not an indigenous British bird, nor is it a distinct 
species,” At least three species are well known here in a wild 
state,—Phasianus colchicus, torquatus, and versicolor,—and of 
late years a few others have been introduced and turned out by 
way of experiment. In referring to the earliest mention of the 
Pheasant in England, he is in error regarding the date; 1177 
being the date of the MS. in which the bill of fare is mentioned, 
and not of the bill itself, which was framed a.p. 1059, 
In ‘ The Field’ of March 81st, 1888, appeared an article (not 
by Mr. Watson) on the subject of small birds being assisted in 
their migrations by larger ones, and of this (without any acknow- 
-ledgment) Mr. Watson gives a réchauffé in the first portion of his 
chapter on ‘‘Bird-problems,” the second portion of the same 
chapter, on the flight of birds, having been evidently inspired by 
a perusal of the Duke of Argyll’s ‘ Reign of Law.’ This style of 
writing is not to be commended, for it allows the unwary reader 
to suppose that a chapter so constructed is new and original, 
whereas it is only a counterfeit. Worse than this, it sometimes 
saddles the author quoted with mistakes which he has not com- 
mitted. We may point to an instance of this on p. 74, where 
Mr. Watson, commenting on what is now a well-known fact, viz., 
that the Woodcock carries its young from the nest to the feeding- 
ground, observes that the young are not conveyed either by or in 
the bill, and that ‘it is just as erroneous to substitute the claws, 
as some have done, for the bill.” If Mr. Watson had attentively 
