Notices of new books* 441 



can only be regarded as provisional, and it is to be hoped it will 

 soon undergo revision, as neither the position nor the names of 

 the species are always to be considered as satisfactory." In this 

 we fully agree. 



In regard to illustrations there are four coloured plates, by 

 Keulemans, of the Black Redstart, Montagu's Harrier, Rough- 

 legged Buzzard, and Black-headed Gull; a coloured frontispiece 

 of Yes Tor, the home of the Ring Ouzel ' and photographs of the 

 birds at Lundy, the Start Lighthouse, Slapton Ley, and the 

 Eddystone. These, with a good map of the county, and the maps 

 illustrating migration already referred to, complete a volume 

 which must for long remain the best on the subject of which it 

 treats. 



The Fauna and Flora of Gloucestershire. By C. A. Witchell 

 and W. B. Strugnell. Royal 8vo, pp. i — xxiv, 1—300. 

 Stroud: G. H. James. 1892. 



In regard to its natural history Gloucestershire seems to 

 have been somewhat neglected. We do not call to mind much 

 that has been published on the subject beyond Knapp's 'Journal 

 of a Naturalist,' which we read in our school-days ; Nicholls' 

 ■ Account of the Forest of Dean ' ; and that apocryphal work 

 1 The Naturalist in Siluria,' which was reviewed in these pages not 

 long since (Zool. 1889, p. 195). The last-named, by the way, 

 includes some remarks on White Stoats in the parish of Flaxley, 

 on the depredations of Squirrels, and Martens in the Forest of 

 Dean, — items of Gloucestershire Zoology to which no allusion 

 is made in the volume before us. 



Mr. Witchell, therefore, has had but few predecessors to aid 

 his undertaking, and has had to rely mainly on his own powers 

 of observation, and those of his contributors, of whom a goodly 

 list is given. It looks well, in the interest of natural history, 

 that more than fifty observers should be found able and willing 

 to contribute information for a general work on the fauna and 

 flora of their county, and the result of their combined observa- 

 tions is worthy of commendation, though we should much have 

 preferred a careful digest of the whole in preference to the series 

 of paragraphs which are followed by the initials of the contri- 

 butors, and which give the work a fragmentary and incomplete 

 appearance. 



