2S S 



THE BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 



The | Birds of Cheshire | by | T. A. Coward and Charles Oldham | 



with "six photogravure illustrations | and a map of the county. | Manchester 

 | Sherratt and Hughes | 27 St. Ann Street | 1900 [8vo. cloth, viii. + 278 

 pages, 6 plates and map]. 



The authors of this work are to be congratulated on having 

 supplied a long-felt want, and have spared neither pains nor 

 trouble in doing- so. They complain with some cause that 

 i Ornithology has found but few votaries among- Cheshire 

 naturalists,' but in Cheshire as in every county there are 

 numbers of persons, sportsmen in particular, who are keen 

 observers of nature, and who take a special interest in birds 

 and their habits, but who are deterred from recording their 

 observations either because they consider them too trivial or 

 because they do not know to whom to communicate them. To 

 these a published volume on the local fauna is invaluable, and 

 we hope that ' The Birds of Cheshire ' will soon find its way 

 into every library in the county. To ornithologists the book is 

 no less welcome, containing- as it does an accurate record of the 

 birds of the whole county, the utmost care having- been taken 

 to sift all available evidence concerning doubtful occurrences, to 

 notify and acknowledg-e all sources of information, and to verify 

 the references of other authors. The result is presented in 

 a handsome volume with six good illustrations. We think such 

 a work should have been furnished with a better map ; it is 

 impossible to judg-e from the one before us in which direction 

 the border streams, Etherow, Goyt, and Dane, are supposed to 

 flow, and if the elevations had been noted, the characteristic meres 

 tinted, and the extensive parks and tracts of forest land also 

 brought out in colour, the physical features of the county, well 

 described in the introduction, would have been rmide more clear. 



The authors claim that there is satisfactory evidence of the 

 occurrence in a wild state of two hundred and twenty-two 

 species during - the present century, and attribute the comparative 

 poverty of the avifauna chiefly to the geographical position of 

 the county, which not only lies east of the fly-line between 

 Scotland and Anglesea via the Isle of Man, but (as they hold) 

 east of the route between Lancashire and the Welsh coast, for 

 in migrating movements observed at t he Dee Lightship (pre- 

 sumably oil the Point of Air in Flintshire) the route taken by 

 the passing- birds was N.E. or S.W. 'The number of resident 

 species also would, no doubt, be larger were there a rocky 

 coast line.' 



u).x> September 1. 



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