( 369 ) 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Essays and Photogra'phs. Some Birds of the Canary Islands and 

 South Africa. By Henry E. Harris. R. H. Porter. 



A TRIP to South Africa is always enjoyable, especially if a 

 halt is made at the Canary Islands, which can now be easily done 

 by travelling on board one of the intermediate steamers of the 

 Union-Castle line. Mr. Harris has visited both spots as an 

 ornithologist, relying on his camera and not on his gun for the 

 spoils he brought home, which constitute the photographs supply- 

 ing the material for fifty-five plates. These illustrations alone 

 were well worth publishing, but the author has also supplied 

 some excellent field observations, especially as to nesting habits. 



Mr. Meade-Waldo has already published a list of the birds to 

 be found on the Canary Islands, and Mr. Harris has now written 

 a good supplement on a different branch of the science. Nature 

 has not exhausted herself on these islands. We have sailed 

 along the coast of Fuerteventura, but even then did not realize 

 the grandeur of its dreariness as we have by reading some of the 

 pages in this book. It is the fate of most travelling naturalists 

 to visit a region at a wrong or disappointing season, and not to 

 do all that was expected. Mr. Harris seems to have had a 

 similar experience, but he secured photographs of many nests 

 and eggs, that of the Houbara Bustard being one of the most 

 charming and realistic. 



In South Africa, Mr. Harris found his happiest hunting- 

 ground in the neighbourhood of the Knysna Forest, a region far 

 too little visited by either ornithologist or entomologist. We are 

 glad to see illustrations of the nest and eggs of the Secretary 

 Bird, and the nesting site of the Hammerkop, though both 

 require larger space than can be afforded in any ordinary book to 

 give a real impression of their massive structure. The author also 

 paid considerable attention to the shore-nesting birds, and gives 

 instances of the intelligent manner in which some Plovers seek 



