NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 117 



The Birds of Lancashire. By F. S. Mitchell. Second Edition, 

 revised and annotated by Howard Saunders, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 

 8vo, pp. 265. With map and illustrations. London: Gurney 

 and Jackson. 1892. 



The first edition of this book, though of no exceptional 

 merit, was soon dispersed, owing probably to the fact that the 

 edition was a small one and the county a large one, wherein a 

 greater number of people take an interest in Ornithology than 

 is the case perhaps in any other county in England, except 

 possibly Yorkshire. At any rate, in the interval which has 

 elapsed since 1885, when the book first appeared, some interesting 

 observations have been made on Lancashire birds, chiefly in the 

 pages of 'The Zoologist,' and the new edition just revised by 

 Mr. Howard Saunders, in the absence of the author from England, 

 contains so many additional notes that it cannot be dispensed 

 with even by those who possess the former one. 



It seems to have escaped the notice of both author and editor 

 that the scattered papers on Natural History by the late Thomas 

 Garnett, of Low Moor, Clitheroe, were collected and reprinted, in 

 1883, in one volume, in which (at page 171) will be found the 

 observations to which they allude (p. 70) on the alarm-note of one 

 bird understood by other species. This volume might have been 

 usefully consulted for ornithological notes made in Lancashire, 

 and would have saved a laborious search through the earlier 

 volumes of the ' Magazine of Natural History,' to which publica- 

 tion Mr. Garnett was in the habit of contributing. 



As regards the species added to the Lancashire list in this 

 new edition, the Purple Heron (p. 145) has evidently crept in by 

 mistake, since Alderley Edge, where it is reported to have been 

 shot, is in Cheshire, not Lancashire, and is at least seven miles 

 from the border. No doubt the mistake arose from the fact 

 that the original recorder (Zool. 1887, p. 432) wrote, " Alderley 

 Edge, about thirteen miles from Manchester," which is mis- 

 leading. 



The next addition, the Sociable Plover, Vanellus gregarius 

 (p. 213), is a remarkable one, as being the only known instance 

 of the occurrence of this species in the British Islands. The 

 bird in question, it appears, was included in the first edition of 

 this work as a " Cream-coloured Courser," although how the 



