CLARKE : SOME RECENT BIRD-BOOKS. 



useful — work, and give them broader ideas than those now held. 

 Moreover, although we have Mr. Dresser's magnificent and ency- 

 clopsedic volumes on the ' Birds of Europe ' — a work of which all 

 Englishmen may feel justly proud, but one of the many books on a 

 favourite study that can, from their costliness, be commanded by 

 comparatively few — this book, strange to say, stands alone as the 

 only work worthy of attention on the European (Western Palae- 

 arctic) avifauna, in any language. North America, on the contrary, 

 has and has had a number of good books, both costly and cheap, 

 devoted to its feathered tribes, and the result is, its avifauna has 

 been worked up, not only to a great pitch of perfection for so large 

 a natural region, but its birds are famiHar to the whole body of its 

 ornithologists — a most happy state of things, resulting in the younger 

 naturalists knowing exactly where there is an opening for their 

 investigations. These manuals have another distinct use — they are 

 a most desirable vade mecum for the traveller, since they readily go 

 into a corner of the portmanteau. Mr. Ridgway's Manual is not 

 intended to be in any sense a popular treatise ; it is eminently a 

 student's book, the descriptive portion of it being based upon the 

 ' key ' principle throughout. By this method the consulter is con- 

 veyed by means of clear diagnostic characters, based entirely upon 

 external peculiarities, from the orders through families and genera to 

 species and sub-species, which are described in all phases of their 

 plumage. It is the production of one of the most accomplished of 

 living ornithologists, who, as Keeper of the Department of Birds 

 in the United States National Museum, has had the unrivalled 

 collections of that institution at his command, and the result is, in 

 every respect, a thoroughly reliable Manual, based upon the latest 

 lines laid down by scientific ornithologists. The 464 outline 

 figures of generic characters, contained on 124 plates, will be 

 welcome, because useful, not only to American naturalists, but 

 to ornithologists generally. These plates have been produced by 

 what is known as the ' Jewett ' process, and are quite marvels for 

 their wonderful clearness. The frontispiece to the book is devoted 

 to an artistic portait of him who was Nestor of American ornitholo- 

 gists — the late Spencer Fullerton Baird. 



In The Birds of Wiltshire — one of the latest additions to the 

 series of County avifaunas — we have a marked contrast to Mr. 

 Ridgeway's Manual, which will, no doubt, be considered by some as 

 too scientific and advanced; while the Rev. Mr. Smith's book is 

 decidedly retrograde. An author is certainly fully entitled to his 

 convictions, but we, on seeing our old familiar friend the Swift 

 regarded as a species of the Swallow family (Hirundinidaj), confess to 



April i888. n 



