Short Notes and Queries. 



17 



gamekeeper, who informed us that during the week previous to our visit, 

 he had shot a young horned owl. There was another one in company 

 with it, but it succeeded in escaping. — Walter Raine, July 15th. 



Jack-Snipe nesting in Barkisland. — In my first note I did not state 

 that the female jack-snipe which was shot was a crippled bird, her wing 

 had been broken before, the humerus, or arm bone, had been completely 

 divided, but was perfectly healed with an overlapping or spliced joint, 

 which shortened the wing, and incapacitated her for migration. Thomas 

 Jagger, who first observed the birds, could have run her down and caught 

 her any time, but he wanted both birds and the nest, but failed to find 

 the latter. George Hey, in whose rough field the nest was, saw from the 

 window of his house, Jagger carefully searching about a particular place, 

 where he had gone ; Hey went, flushed the maimed bird, and found the 

 nest, containing four eggs ; J agger came two days after, raised both birds, 

 fired at the perfect one, missed it, but killed the lame one, which could 

 not fly above fifty yards at a time. The jack-snipe not having been known 

 to have bred in the British Isles, is no proof that it never has, nor that 

 it never will do. Mr. Crossley, bookseller. Union Street, Halifax, saw 

 a pair of jack-snipes near Hebden Bridge, on the 24th ult. He is a good 

 ornithologist, not likely to be mistaken. — C. C. Hanson. 



REVIEWS.—" Handbook of Yorkshire Vertebrata," by Messrs. W. 

 E. Clarke and W. D. Roebuck, Hon. Sees. Yorkshire Naturalists' Union. 

 London : L. Reeve and Co. ; Leeds, R. Jackson, 1881. — The authors of 

 this work, which is dedicated by permission to Sir John Lubbock, Bart. , 

 M.P., D.C.L., President elect of the British Association for the current 

 year, have spared no pains in rendering it as complete as possible, and 

 we heartily congratulate them upon its production. It is the first time 

 such a work has been published for this large county, and it has been 

 done in a manner which leaves little to desire. Besides being a record of 

 the fauna of the county, it is also a list of the whole British fauna, all 

 the species being included, and those specially referred to which do now 

 or have previously been recorded to occur in Yorkshire ; the extinct 

 species being printed in old English tyije, to distinguish them. The 

 mammalia, which include fifty of the seventy-two British records, are 

 arranged substantially on the plan of the second edition of " Bell's 

 History of British Quadrupeds " (1874), modified upon the writings of 

 other zoologists. The nomenclature and classification of the birds has 

 confessedly been a difliculty, as Prof. Newton's new edition of Yarrell is 

 not yet ready ; eventually, however, the authors decided to adopt the 

 the arrangement — with slight modifications — of Dresser's Birds of 

 Europe." Of the 380 British birds, 306 (doubtful occurrences not 

 included) are recorded for Yorkshire, which is a very large proportion. 

 Many new c(junty records are given, including the Dartford warbler, 

 pine grosbeak, Lapland bunting, ruddy sheldrake, blacl^-winged stilt, 

 sooty tern, Wilson's petrel, &c. ; whilst much new and important inform- 



