43



REVIEWS.


Foreign Finches in Captivity , by Arthur G. Butler , Ph.D., etc.,

(L. Reeve & Co., 6, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden). Part VI.


The present part contains descriptions and coloured plates

of some of the most charming and popular of the Grass Finches,

commencing with the Parrot Finch, the Pintailed Nonpareil,

and the Gouldian Finches. The coloured plates of all these

species are excellent, and the letter-press is as interesting and

as reliable as that of the preceding numbers. An account of the

nesting of the Red-headed Gouldian Finch, from the pen of

Mr. Reginald Phillipps, will be read with very special interest.

The fadts bearing on the true relationship of the Red-headed and

Black-headed Gouldians are clearly and intelligently discussed

by Dr. Butler, in a style which might well be copied by some of

our dogmatic avicultural writers.


The descriptions and illustrations of the Parson Finch and

Diamond Sparrow are good : the male of the latter is represented

performing his ridiculous love dance. An account of the Ribbon

Finch follows (we prefer the old-fashioned and more descriptive

name of Cut-throat Finch), and a very pretty plate of the Zebra

Finch concludes the number. We think the artist has hardly

done justice to the perky, alert appearance of the latter bird.



Birds, Beasts, a?id Fishes of the Norfolk Broadland,

by P. H. Emerson. (David Nutt, 270-71, Strand).


This is mainly a book on birds, for the beasts and fishes

together occupy less than one-fifth of its four hundred pages.


There is a good deal of truth in Mr. Emerson's condem¬

nation of the illustrations which disfigure most works on

ornithology; but his strictures are rather too sweeping-—he

weakens his case by overstating it.


Our author is very complimentary to Sir Ralph Payne-

Galway and the late Mr. Booth ; and very severe on Gilbert

White, Richard Jeffries, and “ A Son of the Marshes.” White’s

reputation is too firmly established to be affedted by anything

that Mr. Emerson can say, and Jeffries also has, by this time,

attained a position almost above criticism—but it seems to us a

mistake, in the Preface to a work of this kind, for the author to

endeavour to discredit his great predecessors, and rather bad

taste to speak disparagingly of a contemporary writer of the

same style of literature.


Perhaps we shall best enable our readers to form an idea

of this book if we give in full the chapter on the Goldfinch.



