NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 469 



In our humble opinion the publishers should have remembered 

 that " art " also is progressive; and to issue as specimens of book- 

 illustration, in 1894, plates that passed muster in 1844, is a 

 retrograde step which is much to be deplored. 



To re-issue the text, also, with no more alterations than might 

 be necessary to bring it fairly up to date, sounds well in theory, but 

 in practice would be impossible. The changes in classification and 

 nomenclature, the discovery of new species, the extension of 

 knowledge on the subjects of distribution, migration, seasonal 

 changes of colour, and even, in some cases, of structure, e. g. in 

 the Puffin, would render any such attempt futile. There was 

 obviously nothing for it but to re-write the text de novo, and this 

 it has been decided to do. 



At the outset we take exception to the title. In the old days 

 the name of the serial was associated with the name of the 

 editor, not that of the publisher. Why has this proper order of 

 things been reversed ? To the term " Handbook " we object for 

 two reasons : first, because it is " preoccupied " in relation to 

 1 British Birds '; and secondly, because — the work being in more 

 than one volume — the term is strictly speaking inapplicable. 

 However that may be, the title is now published, and we have to 

 deal with the work as we find it. Whether it was wanted at all 

 is a question on which we have some doubt ; for it seems to us 

 that in the fourth edition of Yarrell, so admirably elucidated and 

 improved by Prof. Newton ; in the excellent ' Manual ' by Mr. 

 Howard Saunders ; and in the extensive field-notes and beauti- 

 fully coloured plates in Mr. Seebohm's work, the modern student 

 of Ornithology has practically all that he can possibly desire or 

 wish for in the shape of text-books. Dr. Sharpe's new volume, 

 if it teaches us anything, teaches us to unlearn much that we 

 knew before, and to commit to memory a new scheme of classifi- 

 cation and much new nomenclature. To this, on the score of 

 needlessness, we very much object. 



Linnaeus (for whose nomenclature Dr. Sharpe very properly 

 professes reverence), in arranging his Orders of Birds, commenced 

 with the Accipitres, or birds of prey. In this he has been followed, 

 for more than a century, by the leading ornithologists of England, 

 France, and Germany, to say nothing of other nations. Some 

 five-and-twenty years ago the tide turned ; Prof. Huxley proposed 

 a new scheme of classification, based upon the form of the palatal 



