64 THE IBIS 



first number was received with a chorus of praise by 

 contemporary journals, so Newton tried to induce others 

 to write less favourable comments, lest the young society 

 should become too much filled with satisfaction. Mr. 

 A. C. Smith, who was not yet a member, was asked by 

 Newton to write a letter to the Zoologist picking holes in, 

 or pulling feathers out of, the Ibis, and in reply to his 

 complaint that he had no fault to find with the magazine 

 he received the following letter : — 



But your objection that you do not know what to 

 find fault with in the Ibis is indeed not valid. Nothing 

 can be easier. It is printed 8vo size ; it ought to have 

 been 4to to have allowed the plates to be larger, or 12mo, 

 that it would have been easier to hold in the hand. It 

 ought to be pubhshed monthly or bi-monthly, or half- 

 yearly, or annually ; anything but quarterly. There is 

 a want of unity about the design, or its contents display 

 page after page a sameness which palls upon the reader. 

 Its price is too high for the ornithological public, or it is 

 too low to enable justice to be done to the plates. No 

 pubhcation of the sort was wanted at aU, or that the 

 void which every one felt existed has by no means been 

 filled by the Ibis. Or, to go into particulars, that the 

 Ornithology of Central America is far too dry, the birds 

 of St. Croix too flippant. Mr. E. C. Taylor's paper on 

 Egyptian Ornithology is only a rechauffe of what had 

 already appeared in the Zoologist. (N.B. — Taylor says 

 he sent his hst of birds to Newman with remarks upon 

 them, as afterwards printed in the Ibis, but Newman cut 

 them all out, except one about the Egyptian Vulture's 

 feet, and printed the bare hst in the Zoologist.) Mr. 

 WoUey devotes whole articles to the finding of a bird's 

 nest as if no one had ever done such a thing before. Mr. 

 Simpson is as bad. Messrs. Sturge and Evans thought 

 because they went so far as Spitzbergen, therefore it was 

 necessary that everybody else should be interested about 

 them. Mr. Gurney's contributions are mere lists of what 

 his collectors send him. Messrs. Salvin and Tristram 



