THE NIDIOLOGIST 



33 





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[Publications for review alionid bp sent to Dr. E. "W. Suufet-dt, 

 Associate in Zoology, Smithsonian Institution, 'Washington, D. G.] 



PUBLICATIONS Received. 



Bkightwen, Ei.iza. Iiimati-s of My House- nii<i Gar- 

 den. Macmillan & Co.. New York and London, 

 1S95. Pp. 1-277. Illustrated by Theo. Carreras. 

 Sm. Svo, gilt top, cloth, $1.25. [From the pub- 

 lishers.] 



Sw.\XN, H. K. Nature in Acadie. John Bale & Sons, 

 London, 1S95. Pp. i-viii, 1-74. Frontispiece, 

 ■' Melville Island." Sm. Svo, cloth. [From the 

 publishers.] 



MiVART, St. George, F.R.S. The Skeleton of Lo- 

 rius Jlavopalliatns compared with that of Psittacus 

 erithaciis. Part L Proc. of the Zoological Society 

 of London. April 2. 1S95. 



Chap.man, F. M. Further jVotes on Trinidad Birds, 

 -with a Description of a New Species of Svnalla.xis. 

 E.xt. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Vol.'VH, Art. 

 i.\. Pp. 321-326. New York, October 7, iSg's. 

 Author's Ed. [From the author.] 



HovLE, William E. Report of the Manchester Mu. 

 seiim, Owens College, with Appendices. [Manchester, 

 England.] J. E. Cornish, 1895. Paper cover. Pp. 

 1-5S. [From the author ; keeper of the museum.] 



The Anh. Vol. XII, No. 4. October, 1895. 



The Feather. Vol. I, No. i. October 15, 1S95. 



The Obsei-i'er. September and October, 1S95. 



The American Monthly Microscopical jpournal. Vol. 

 XVI, No. 10. October, 1S95. 



Popular Science Ne-ws. November, 1S95. 



The American Field. October, 1895. 



Forest and Stream. October, 1895. 



Shooting and Fishing. October, 1895. 



Brightvven' : Inmates of my House and Garden is a 

 dainty little book gotten out in theMacmillans'daintiest 

 style, with fine binding, beautiful paper and type, and 

 well-e.xecuted reproductions of illustrations. Mrs. 

 Brightwen is a charming renderer of the lives and 

 habits of various animals living in a state of domes- 

 tication, as anyone will be prepared to say who has 

 read her Wild Nature IFon by Kindness. It is, as 

 in times past, the authoress's "privilege to be un- 

 usually well placed for the minute study of living 

 creatures, and in that study I find a pleasure so in- 

 tense that I long to attract others to the same well- 

 spring of pleasure. Unpretending as are the chroni- 

 cles of the inmates of my house and garden, they are 

 scrupulously true, and every fact that a veracious 

 observer records is a contribution, however small, 

 to our general sum of knowledge." Never were 

 truer words than these written, and it has been 

 with no little pleasure that I have read some of the 

 many chapters that go to make up this book. Only a 

 few of them, however, are devoted to birds, as, for ex- 

 ample, those on the Brown Owl, the Willow Wrens, 

 and Tame Doves. Of course, with a great many, an 



English book, written in England by an English au- 

 thor, about English birds may not be very attractive 

 to readers in America ; but that by no means should 

 be the case, and I am very sure // is by no means the 

 case, especially when Mrs. Brightwen is the authoress 

 of the book. A charm is given to this volume by the 

 beauty of the figures ; these are all attractive, save 

 those of the Owls, which latter are very poor (pp. 79, 

 81) ; fev/ artists, however, are ever able to portray 

 these birds, as 1 have frequently said in print else- 

 where. But a technical work is not here being con- 

 sidered, rather on the other hand, a collection of ran- 

 dom chapters on pets, truthfully given to the world 

 by the hand of one who loves them, with the hope 

 that the contribution may serve to draw many observ- 

 ers '■.till closer to Mother Nature, and these are the 

 very kind of books that exert that influence, and the 

 more we have of them, and the wider their influence 

 is felt, the better will this world be. R. W. S. 



SwAN'X: Nature in Acadie comes to us as does the 

 morning in the far northern forests in May, laden 

 with all that is so sweet to the senses, and so attract- 

 ive to the very inner nature of man. It bears with it 

 everything that makes the woodlands and fields of 

 Nova Scotia so charming in the springtime and early 

 summer. One is almost made to hear, as its pages 

 are perused, the combined songs of the birds that carry 

 their migrations to those far-off subboreal region. 

 Its author, although a well-known writer of Orni- 

 thological works in England, has here dropped all his 

 science, and as an Englishman simply, and in choice 

 words, tells ns of the impressions he gains of our more 

 abundant American birds as he studied them for the 

 first time in Acadian forests, and during his westward 

 sea voyage from England to come there. The book 

 is not " intended to be concerned with the doings of 

 men. and it will be found, indeed, that the author has 

 studiously ignored the subject. One need not jour- 

 ney three thousand miles to study human nature." 

 On the contrary, nearly all the scones described, and 

 the birds observed were those of the country extend- 

 ing for miles about the city of Halifax, where the 

 most of the author's spare time was spent during his 

 sojourn. This has been accomplished in a masterly 

 style of word-picturing, the chief charm of the vol- 

 ume, and one that commands the attention and inter- 

 est of the Nature-lover from preface to final paragraph. 

 To appreciate a book of this kind, however, it needs 

 to be read by the Ornithologist himself, and that, too, 

 at a time when, relieved from the severer labors of his 

 science, he seeks to listen to others who have to tell 

 of its gentler experiences : of those where library and 

 workshop, and trays upon trays of dry bird skins are 

 temporarily laid aside. Mr. Swann's scientific eyes 

 were not quite as tightly closed, however, as he would 

 have us believe, for in a very useful " Appendi.x " to 

 his little volume he proceeds to show us that he ob- 

 served no less than seventy-seven birds during his 

 outing, and these he has arranged after the order of 

 the A. O. U. Check List, giving at the same time the 

 synonyms usually employed by British Ornithologists, 

 and the racial varieties of species which occur in Brit- 

 ain. This list, though, is not intended as a complete 

 list of Nova Scotian birds, as many occur there that 

 the author did not happen to meet with during so 

 brief a stay. There is little to criticise in a work of 

 this nature, but judging from what Mr. Swann says on 

 page 33 in regard to the Mockingbird. I hope that he 

 may be able some day to spend a spring in Florida 

 wilds — it will bea revelation to him, widen his views. 

 Ornithological, and doubtless result in a volume quite 

 as welcome as the one here noticed. 



R. W. S. 



