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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Notes on the Birds of Rutland. By C. Beginald Haines, 

 M.A., &c. B. H. Borter. 



This is a small book relating to a small avifauna of a small 

 county, but a sterling ornithological publication, for not only is 

 a carefully compiled account given of the 200 birds included 

 with certainty in the fauna, but in the introduction some cogent 

 reasons are given why more birds could scarcely be expected in 

 the confines of this county. There is, of course, no sea coast, 

 which means much ; of its area of little over 100,000 acres not 

 100 acres are waste land or heath, and not 200 acres are water ; 

 there are scarcely 400 acres of woodland, while orchards cover 

 less than 150 acres ; permanent pasture absorbs more than half 

 of the whole area, and rotation crops account for another 36,000 

 acres. In reading such facts as these we feel confident that the 

 time will soon be at hand when some competent and philosophical 

 ornithologist will, with all the excellent county bird books now 

 available for consultation, write a volume on the natural con- 

 ditions which effect the distribution and status of birds in the 

 different counties of Great Britain. 



The Butland birds have waited for a recorder ; Montagu 

 Browne had not studied the birds of the small county as he had 

 those of Leicestershire ; and we are told that, "with one important 

 exception, there are no records or notes bearing upon the subject 

 which date back more than a hundred years." Mr. Haines has 

 therefore rendered a distinct service in giving us, what cannot 

 be doubted is, an adequate account of the birds of our smallest 

 English county. 



The Nervous System of Vertebrates. By J. B. Johnston, 

 Ph.D., &c. John Murray. 



This is an important book for the serious student of animal 

 evolution, though its method and practice are rather more 

 abstruse than the bionomic and distributional features largely 



