NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 329 



of course can be sifted too finely sometimes, but perhaps a large 

 mesh seems the best net for enclosing ornithological narratives. 



The first edition was completed in November, 1889, and then 

 enumerated 367 species considered as British. In this edition 

 the total is raised to 384, and some of the new additions will be 

 familiar to the readers of this magazine. Of the 384 species 

 described, " those which have bred within the United Kingdom 

 during the present century may be taken as 199 (if the extinct 

 Great Auk is included) ; about 74 non-breeding wanderers have 

 occurred fewer than six times, and 66 others are more or less 

 infrequent visitors; while 45 species annually make their appear- 

 ance on migration or during the colder months, in some portion 

 of our long narrow group of islands or upon the surrounding 

 waters." A too insular standpoint for studying our British avine 

 fauna is negatived by the inclusion of three coloured maps. The 

 first and second are bathy-orographical of the British Isles and 

 Europe respectively, showing the comparative elevation of the 

 land in the United Kingdom, and the depth of the surrounding 

 seas ; the third is a North Polar Chart to facilitate the enquiry 

 into the range of the birds which breed in the Arctic regions. 



We need say nothing further of a book of which a first edition 

 of three thousand copies was exhaused in eight years. Apart 

 from the ornithological bookshelf, it is a volume that should also 

 be in every school and village library in these islands. 



Bird-life in a Southern County, being Eight Years' Gleanings 

 among the Birds of Devonshire. By Charles Dixon. 

 Walter Scott, Limited. 



We seem to hear too little now of the natural history of such 

 a glorious county as Devonshire, and certainly so in the pages of 

 the * Zoologist/ For years it was the home of Montagu. It is, 

 as Mr. Dixon remarks, rich in species so far as sedentary birds 

 are concerned. " But the same can scarcely be said of migratory 

 species, the county being very unfavourably situated for them. 

 Indeed, next to Cornwall, I should feel inclined to class Devon- 

 shire as the poorest littoral county in England for normal migra- 

 tory birds, lying, as it does, too far to the south-west." But, as 



