398 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



relates to its appearance in a bill of fare at Waltham Abbey in 

 1059, this by no means proves that the bird was first introduced 

 to British soil in the county of Essex; the Adriatic Gull, Larus 

 melanocephalus, shot in Barking Creek in January, 1866; and 

 Scopoli's Sooty Tern, Sterna ancestheta, obtained on one of the 

 lightships at the Nore in September, 1875, as recorded by 

 Mr. Howard Saunders in ■ The Zoologist' for 1877, p. 213. 



As regards the nomenclature adopted in this work, Mr. Christy 

 informs us, in his Introduction, that it is that employed in * The 

 Ibis ' List of British Birds. This list, he considers, " should 

 now be regarded as the standard and only authorized one ; for, 

 although not altogether free from objectionable points, it is the 

 joint work of several of our best working ornithologists, by whom 

 it was most carefully and deliberately compiled, and it has been 

 officially adopted by the Union. It is obviously, therefore, of 

 greater weight than any list compiled by a single person only." 

 This is doubtless a good reason for adopting it; but we are 

 unable to agree with Mr. Christy when he adds that " the height 

 of absurdity has been reached, and the utility of any nomenclature 

 at all has been almost destroyed, when it is necessary, after 

 mentioning a particular name, to add by whom (and often by 

 whom it was not) bestowed " ! He has surely overlooked the 

 fact that the same specific name has been bestowed by different 

 authors on different species, and unless the author's name follows 

 that of the species the latter cannot be indicated with sufficient 

 clearness. Take the case of Sylvia rufa, for example, a name 

 which has been applied by Boddaert, Gmelin, and Temminck to 

 three different Warblers. 



It was a good notion to include in this volume some 

 biographical notices of Essex ornithologists (pp. 8 — 34), and 

 some account of the chief Essex Bird Collections (pp. 35 — 38). 

 In addition to these chapters we have, outside what may be 

 termed the County Catalogue, chapters on Hawking (pp. 43 — 45), 

 and on Decoys and Wildfowling (pp. 47 — 71), the last named 

 being illustrated, and having plans of the only two decoys in 

 Essex which are still worked at the present day. 



The small woodcuts of birds interspersed throughout the 

 text are numerous, but of unequal merit. The majority were 

 originally published in Johns' ' British Birds in their Haunts ' ; 

 others are copied from Bewick and from Buxton's ' Epping 



