Correspondence.


NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS, ETC.



347



USEFUL BIRDS OF SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA. *


On the whole, perhaps, the average Australian displays

even more ignorance of the habits of the birds of his country

than does his brother in the Mother-land. He knows, for

instance, that the White-eyes ( Zosterops ) which are at times

very numerous in his orchards, occasionally help themselves to

his fruit, especially his figs, and he proceeds to kill every one he

can, forgetting that at most times of the 3 ? ear these little birds

feed entirely upon insects and rid his trees of enormous quanti¬

ties of these pests. In the little book before us Mr. Robert

Hall, one of the foremost of Australian Ornithologists, has

endeavoured to point out to his fellow countrymen the good

points as well as the bad, in the birds which are met with in

Southern Australia ; and with the aid of this useful handbook all

ignorance on the subject should be dispelled. The book is

interesting and instructive, and is well illustrated.



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.



“ THE BRITISH RAILS.”


Sir,—I n the last number of our Magazine there is a paper on British

Rails by Mr. P. W. Farmborough, in which he treats of “ the Water Rails.”

I cannot help thinking that in using this name, he does soin a plueric sense

for most of his remarks seem to me entirely applicable to the Moorhen

(Gallinula chloropus) and not to the Water Rail {Rallus aquaticus) at all. If

this is so it is a pity, I think, that it is not made clear in the paper.


My special reason for drawing attention to the matter in the writer’s

remarks on p. 304 where he says that on July iStli he saw two or more

(and in one instance 110 less than seven Water Rails) in nearly every field in

the immediate proximity of water, while 011 a railway journey through

Kent. Now if these birds were the common Moorhen, there is nothing

remarkable about it, and it is so utterly unlike the skulking habits of the

Water Rail to wander about in even two’s and three’s in open fields by the

side of a railway that I cannot but think that Mr. Farmborough’s Water

Rails are really Moorhens.



*The Useful Birds of Southern Australia, with Notes 011 other Birds, By Robkrt Hali,

H.L.S., C M.Z.S. T. C. Lothian, Melbourne and Sydney, 1907.



