NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 113 



occupied in Soho Square. A copy, however, is in the possession of the 

 Rev. W. Smith Tomkins, of Weston-super-Mare, who has kindly placed it 

 at the disposal of the Editor for publication in ' The Zoologist.' ' This 

 list refers to Oxfordshire, inasmuch as some of the birds recorded in it were 

 procured on that part of the River Thames which divides this county from 

 Berkshire, such occurrences belongiug therefore with equal propriety to 

 both counties. It is also interesting to compare the condition of the avi- 

 fauna, at the beginning of the last century, of the neighbouring parts of 

 this border county, which would probably differ very little from that of the 

 district treated of in the present volume at the same time. 



"An account of the Vertebrate Animals of the district is appended to the 

 * History of Banbury ' (1841), by Mr. Alfred Beesley. It is little more than 

 a bare list of species, and includes 109 birds. The author acknowledges 

 assistance from Mr. James Loftus, formerly of Banbury, Mr. M. Jessop 

 and Mr. T. Abbott of Banbury, and Mr. T. Busby of North Newington. 



"'In 'The Zoologist' for 1849, and the following year, appeared a 

 series of articles by the Revs. Andrew and Henry Matthews, entitled ' The 

 Birds of Oxfordshire and its Neighbourhood.' The list comprised 232 

 species, but of these nine must be excluded from the census of Oxon birds, 

 as the examples upon which their title to inclusion rests were procured in 

 the neighbouring parts of Berkshire or Buckinghamshire. The authors 

 wrote from Westou-on-the-Green, in the Otmoor country, where they had 

 been resident for many years, a district most favourable for observing the 

 more uncommon wildfowl which visit us in winter ; the list is accordingly 

 very rich in records of this group of birds. For this reason, and from the 

 fact that the writers' experience goes back to the time when the country 

 was less carefully drained than it is now, and to the time when not only 

 were the ordinary wildfowl far more numerous than at present, but when 

 the Kite, the Buzzard, the Raven, the Harriers and the Bittern were not 

 infrequently met with, the Messrs. Matthews' excellent account of our birds 

 is of especial interest and value to the county faunist. In 1876 and 1877 

 Mr. C. M. Prior contributed to the ' Banbury Guardian ' a series of articles 

 upon the ' Birds of North Oxon.' In 1882 was published a pamphlet, 

 entitled ' A List of the Birds of the Banbury District, written by the 

 author in conjunction with his brothers ; and the list, which included 180 

 species, applied mainly to North Oxfordshire. In June, 1886, appeared 

 1 A Year with the Birds,' by an Oxford Tutor. A second and enlarged 

 edition, in which the author, Mr. W. Warde Fowler, revealed his identity 

 to the public, was issued before the year was out. This edition contains a 

 list of the birds observed within a radius of four miles around Oxford during 

 the three preceding years, including 104 species. The present writer is 

 indebted to this work for much useful information relating to the birds in 



ZOOLOGIST, — MARCH, 1890, K 



