NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 283 



Birds of our Islands. By F. A. Fuloher. Andrew Melrose. 1897. 



This is an excellent book to put in the hands of a bird- 

 loving boy or girl, or better still to serve as a school prize book. 

 We well recollect how little natural history was found in the 

 academical volumes presented to the weary scholar some forty 

 years ago ; and when some zoological treatise was dispensed it 

 was usually a mixture of second-hand observation and turgid 

 teleology. Now all this is changed, and there seems to be a 

 danger sometimes that the mass of juvenile literature will end in 

 amateur science. 



Mr. Fulcher writes pleasantly on our native birds, and treats 

 his subject on the lines of a somewhat conversational narrative, 

 in which a considerable amount of information is afforded as to 

 habits, nesting, &c. The method is purely non-scientific — not 

 by any means unscientific — the English bird names being alone 

 given, and classification quite ignored ; the principal works used 

 in verification and amplification of the author's own observations 

 being, we are told, Hudson's * British Birds ' and Dixon's ' Eggs 

 and Nests of British Birds.' 



The illustrations are numerous, but we cannot help thinking 

 that the facial expression of the Long- eared Owl given at p. 249 

 is of a particularly benign and human-like description.* 



The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma : 

 Hymenoptera. Vol. I. By Lieut. -Col. C. T. Bingham. 

 London : Taylor & Francis. 1897. 



We recently noticed the completion of Sir G. F. Hampson's 

 contribution to this series on the Moths or Heterocera. With 

 commendable promptitude Col. Bingham's first volume of the 

 Hymenoptera — Wasps and Bees — has appeared. Indian natural- 

 ists as a whole and oriental entomologists in general will gladly 

 welcome this publication. The Hymenoptera have not attracted 

 numerous workers and students as the Lepidoptera have done, 

 and yet, as our author remarks, the " Hymenoptera have a right 

 to be considered the most highly developed mentally of all 



* This figure is clearly a reprint from • A Year of Sport and Natural 

 History.' 



