278 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
British Isles it is a resident, a local migrant, a summer visitor, 
a winter visitor, and a bird of passage.’ The chapter on the 
migration of Sturnus vulgaris sufficiently supports and supple- 
ments this conclusion. 
This publication is so full of information and observations 
that an adequate review would end in almost piratical excerpts. 
This, of course, is a method neither desired by author nor 
publisher, nor does it commend itself to the writer of this notice. 
But this we may say—these volumes are necessary to any student 
of bird migration. 

The Flight of Birds. By F. W. Heapury, M.B.O.U. Witherby 
& Co. 
Tue time had arrived for a new and handy book on the 
flight of birds. We ourselves had almost lost touch with the 
subject since 1873, when we acquired and read Pettigrew’s 
‘Animal Locomotion,’ one of the ‘International Scientific 
Series.” The subject is one of a reminiscent nature. When 
we read Mr. Headley’s account of Isaac Newton’s experiments 
with glass globes of equal size but unequal weights which he let 
fall from the dome of St. Paul’s, and by which he established 
his law (not absolutely accurate) that the resistance of the air 
increases as the square of the velocity, we may remember 
Galileo’s somewhat similar experiments from the summit of the 
leaning tower of Pisa, by which he controverted Aristotle’s con- 
clusion that the velocity of a falling body is proportional to its 
weight. 
Apart from animal physics, which is treated with considerable 
amplitude, Mr. Headley’s volume contains ornithological infor- 
mation of the greatest interest. He considers that there is good 
reason to believe that birds while migrating attain far greater 
velocity than they do in their ordinary flights. He gives an 
instance :—‘‘ The American Golden Plovers breed in Arctic 
regions from Alaska to Greenland, above the limits of forest 
growth, and when autumn comes they pass over Nova Scotia, 
strike boldly out to sea, and, generally leaving the Bermudas 
well to the west, sail on over the ocean till they reach the West 
qlndies. It is difficult to believe that these are merely stray 
birds that have been blown out of their course and are sailing on 
