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 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS 



Summer Studies of Birds and Books. By W. Warde Fowler. 

 8vo, pp. 288. London : Macmillan & Co. 1895. 



Mr. Fowler's ' Year with the Birds,' reviewed in this 

 Journal some years ago (Zool. 1887, p. 316), will be familiar to 

 most of our readers, and we are not surprised to find that a third 

 edition of it has lately appeared. In the present volume we have 

 a fresh series of similar essays, breathing of that love of Nature 

 and appreciation of the labours of other naturalists which charac- 

 terised his former book. In that we remember an essay on Virgil's 

 natural history lore ; in this we find an essay on Aristotle's know- 

 ledge of birds, and, for those who have never been at the pains to 

 study the original, a very instructive essay it is. Mr. Fowler, of 

 course, is not the first modern writer who has published remarks 

 on this subject. Thirty years or more ago Prof. Sundevall, well 

 versed in Greek, and with an extensive knowledge of zoology, 

 gave to the world an admirable treatise in his ' Thierarten des 

 Aristotles' (Stockholm, 1863), and, naturally, Mr. Fowler has not 

 omitted to consult it. The result of his research is full of 

 interest. Aristotle's acquaintance with the general facts of bird- 

 life, though in some respects curiously accurate, was on the 

 whole very imperfect. He no doubt had many opportunities of 

 procuring specimens, both alive and dead, in the bird-market at 

 Athens, and also of obtaining information on various points from 

 the bird-catchers who brought them thither for sale. But, as 

 Mr. Fowler puts it, his book was " a collection of odd bits of 

 unsifted information, so far as it relates to living birds ; his real 

 interest lay rather in investigating the organs of animals by 

 dissection." There is, as the late George Henry Lewes long ago 

 remarked, a want of - out-of-doorness " about his book, which 

 breathes not of the fields and streams. He was neither a sportsman 

 nor a field naturalist. Hence it is not surprising that his work 

 does not bear many traces of careful observation, although, as Mr. 

 Fowler points out, there are here and there passages which are 

 of interest to naturalists even now. His remarks, for example, 

 on migration, on the supposed hybernation of certain species, on 

 seasonal change of colour, and on the classification of birds 

 according to the nature of their food, are very striking for the 

 age in which they were made. 



