Bibliographical Notices. 219 



which dates and localities were given, and the scrupulous exactness 

 with which he acknowledged to all his correspondents his obligation 

 for the facts they had communicated. The same trait of character is 

 apparent throughout the present volumes. In fact, he modestly re- 

 marks in the preface, " that the work should rather be considered 

 that of Irish ornithologists generally than of the individual whose 

 name appears on the title-page." 



To one who takes up a volume merely for the purpose of amuse- 

 ment, and who, in the words of Sterne, is " pleased with a book he 

 knows not why and cares not wherefore," the detailed enumeration 

 of dates, names and localities will no doubt be irksome, although 

 even to such a reader, the work, replete as it is with varied anecdote, 

 cannot fail to be attractive. But to those who read with a higher 

 aim and for a loftier purpose, such details will assume a different 

 aspect ; and those whose range of ornithological reading is the most 

 extended will most prize this positive information, and will draw from 

 it oft-times an inference, perhaps a generalization, which but for such 

 well-attested facts, they would not feel warranted in doing. 



There is another light in which these details, though detracting 

 to some extent from the popular character of the work, are even 

 more valuable. They vouch for the fidelity of this record of the 

 Birds of Ireland, as at present known by one who has spent a large 

 portion of his life in their investigation. Fifty years hence, if any 

 writer should take up the same subject, the present work will afford 

 him a firm basis from which to start. Taking its record as true at 

 this time, he will compare it with what he then finds around him, and 

 note the changes that have taken place. Such changes are continually 

 in progress, as evidenced in the present volumes. In the preface to 

 the first, we have, a very striking example of the extent to which 

 birds are influenced by the labours of man :— 



" It is interesting to observe how birds are affected by the opera- 

 tions of man. I have remarked this particularly at one locality near 

 Belfast, situated 500 feet above the sea, and backed by hills rising to 

 800 feet. Marshy ground, the abode of little else than the snipe, 

 became drained, and that species was consequently expelled. As 

 cultivation advanced, the numerous species of small birds attendant 

 on it became visitors, and plantations soon made them inhabitants of 

 the place. The land-rail soon haunted the meadows ; the quail and 

 the partridge the fields of grain. A pond, covering less than an acre of 

 ground, tempted annually for the first few years a pair of the graceful 

 and handsome sandpipers (Totanus hypoleucos), which, with their 

 brood, appeared at the end of July or beginning of August, on their 

 way to the sea-side from their breeding haunt. This was in a moor 

 about a mile distant, where a pair annually bred until driven away by 

 drainage rendering it unsuitable. The pond was supplied by streams 

 descending from the mountains through wild and rocky glens, the 

 favourite haunt of the water-ouzel, which visited its margin daily 

 throughout the year. When the willows planted at the water's edge 



