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NATURE 
THURSDAY, JULY 16, 1885 
THE BIRDS OF LANCASHIRE 
The Birds of Lancashire. By ¥.S. Mitchell, M.B.O.U. 
Illustrated by J. G. Keulemans, Victor Prout, &c. 
Pp. xviii. 224. (London: Van Voorst, 1885.) 
MPORTANT as are the services which the writers of 
county faunas have rendered to the study of British 
ornithology every one knows, or ought to know, that such 
works have a very variable value. In some cases the 
geographical position of the county concerned is such as 
to invest its avifauna with high interest quite apart from 
the manner of its treatment, which may be, and in a few 
instances that we could but will not name, has been of a 
slovenly character. Or again, local considerations may 
be comparatively insignificant, and yet the book, from 
the combined knowledge and skill of the author, will be a 
great and positive gain to zoological literature. Thus it 
follows that the most pretentious works not unfrequently 
fall short of even a moderate standard of excellence, while 
that is attained or even surpassed by others put forward 
with unpresuming modesty. It gives us great pleasure to 
express our opinion that the little book now before us, 
“The Birds of Lancashire,” falls well within the latter 
category. Its author, Mr. Frederick Shaw Mitchell, is 
known to have been engaged in its preparation for several 
years, and that he has used those years of preparation to 
good purpose almost every page in the book testifies. 
We have especially to commend his introductory remarks, 
which prove that he has taken the proper and philo- 
sophical view of the duties of a faunistic monographer, 
while the rest of the book shows how efficiently he has 
discharged them according to that view. 
In these days the county of Lancaster, or at least its 
southern half, with its swarming population, its tall 
chimneys expelling tons upon tons of soot, and, still worse, 
volumes of noxious vapours, its once limpid streams 
drunk up by countless manufactories and returned to 
their channels befouled with deleterious compounds, pre- 
sents almost as poor a field for the outdoor naturalist as 
can well be found in the United Kingdom. Nor does its 
geographical situation offer the ornithologist much promise 
for the pursuit of his study. Its coast-line, though ex- 
tensive as that of English counties goes, is formed by the 
recess of a land-locked sea ; and notwithstanding that as 
yet we really know little of the routes taken by birds in 
their migrations, there is nothing to induce the belief that 
any much-frequented route will be found to skirt More- 
cambe Bay, the sand-hills of Blackpool, or the estuaries 
of the Ribble and the Mersey. Nor do the hills of its 
interior, though rising to the height of nearly 2000 feet, 
and even exceeding that in the northern detached 
district of Furness, which contains the much admired 
Coniston Water and Windermere, add greatly to the 
attractiveness of a county which has the disadvantage of 
lying on the wrong side of our island—for we take it to 
be undeniable that in England birds, both as individuals 
and as species, decrease in number as we pass from the 
eastern to the western coast. 
“The vast increase of population, and the scientific 
VOL. XXXII.—NO. 820 
241 
farming which drains every marsh, substitutes for every 
bosky nook a rigid bank and paling mathematically 
drawn, are the chief causes of the decrease both in species 
and individuals which has taken place in the manufactur- 
ing districts ; but it is astonishing how many still flourish 
among the teeming millions which dwell there, and should 
it be possible for air and water to become more pure, 
there is no doubt that, except in the immediate vicinity of 
buildings, little further diminution would occur. 
“The way in which birds are driven away by the 
extension of buildings, and by the conversion of a rural 
into an urban locality, may well be instanced by the case 
of Peel Park, Salford, which is one in point. Mr. John 
Plant has kindly permitted me to use his notes, which 
have been carefully kept since 1850, and which show the 
following results :— 
Personally observed. Breeding. 
1850-60 Se 71 species 34 species 
1860-70 pac C80 = 66 
1870-75 coe IQ, ae Gh ps 
1876-80 ua Toms ss — +» 
1881 = ey AA Sp — 5 
1882 -e Bon he oily i 
Mr. Plant considers that the main causes are not so much 
simply the presence of more people and greater disturb- 
ance by them, as the destruction of natural food, and loss 
of protective foliage, from the vitiated atmosphere, and 
makes the melancholy prophecy that, if the same thing 
goes on for another ten years, there will not be a large 
tree alive in the park.”—J/ntroductory, p. iil. 
Yet Mr. Mitchell does not think that on the whole birds 
in Lancashire are decreasing, and remarks that “ the 
greater scarcity of the Goldfinch, for instance, which feeds 
on the thistles of waste lands, is balanced by the greater 
plentifulness of the Hawfinch, which prefers a more culti- 
vated country.” The extensive range and increasing 
numbers of the species last mentioned of late years 
throughout the whole of England is indeed a matter that 
is at present quite unaccountable. But Mr. Mitchell goes 
on to say that “if the game-preserver will lay aside some 
of his truculence in respect of species which occasionally 
diminish his stock, if the denizens of towns will discourage 
the bird-catching fraternity, and be content to only hear 
the Linnet and the Bullfinch in their natural haunts, and 
if the specimen hunter will try to be content with skins 
which are not /oca/, there is no reason to expect any 
approach to extinction of species which are now on the 
list.” Here we would remark that not much harm comes 
from bird-catching if the law now existing be obeyed, and 
that without it few “denizens of towns” would ever hear 
the song of any bird ; but we quite agree with what our 
author says as to the game-preserver and skin-collector. 
From the results of somewhat extensive observation in 
many parts of England it is clear that the absolute exter- 
mination of both Kestrel and Sparrow-Hawk—the last of 
the birds-of-prey which can be said to inhabit this country 
generally—will be accomplished in a very few years, and 
even our three species of Owl—in spite of the Act which 
nominally protects them—are likely to suffer the same 
fate. Mr. Mitchell no doubt recognises the fact, as every 
impartial observer must do, that, birds-of-prey excepted, 
the system of strict game-preserving affords an incalcul- 
able amount of protection to all other birds; but the 
“local specimen-hunter” is usually a pestilent character 
indeed—one who without any counterbalancing merit 
Simply flatters his own vanity, degrades an interesting not 
* Starling and House Sparrow. 
M 
