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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
described with great clearness and with an almost total absence of so-called 
hard words. Indeed, the principal thing that a naturalist would be inclined 
to find fault with in this book is the, perhaps excessive, avoidance of 
technicalities, the desire for which has evidently often hampered the author 
and led him to make use of a phraseology, to say the least of it, a little un- 
couth. The little book is pretty freely illustrated with fairly good wood- 
engravings. 
BRITISH BIRDS.* 
T O the fortunate resident in country places who takes an interest in natural 
phenomena there are in general no more attractive objects than birds. 
The most prominent of the living elements of the landscape in most places, 
interesting from their elegance of form or beauty of plumage, and still more 
from their habits, the most unobservant of countrymen is perforce to some 
extent a student of birds, even though his more intimate acquaintance with 
them may be limited to his boyish experience of plundering their nests, or, 
somewhat later in life, to a vigorous persecution of them with his first gun. 
Hence, practically, we find that of all departments of natural history, orni- 
thology is that of which a knowledge (scanty, it is true, in the majority of 
cases) is most generally diffused, and there is no other group of wild animals 
about which the desire for knowledge is greater than the class of birds. 
; Under these circumstances it is no matter for wonder that the literature 
of British ornithology is tolerably extensive ; and, in fact, we have books 
enough — good, bad, and indifferent — which give a more or less satisfactory 
account of the characters and habits of the avian inhabitants of these islands. 
Captain Moore has, however, struck out a new line in this respect, and has 
produced a most unpretending book, which, we think, will prove of no small 
use as a work of reference both to the general observer and to the serious 
student of British birds. In a series of five tables he has systematically 
arranged the whole list of recorded British birds, and furnished in parallel 
columns nearly all the information that can be given as to their geographical 
distribution and migrations. Even the actual list is instructive. The birds 
are divided into three main categories — residents, migrants, and rare (or oc- 
casional) visitants ; and the second set are further divided into summer and 
winter visitants, so that the names of the birds stand in four columns, and 
the proportion of residents to migrants comes out in a most striking and 
rather surprising fashion. Thus, one is hardly prepared to see that out of 
376 recorded British species only 114 are permanent residents in these 
islands, whilst 136 are true migrants, or regular summer or winter visitors, 
and no fewer than 126. fall under the designation of occasional visitants. 
Of the wading and swimming birds especially, the proportion of wanderers 
is very large, the number of species of these two orders, which are either 
migrants or occasional visitors, being about four times as great as that of 
the permanent residents. 
* u British Birds : systematically arranged in five tables, showing the 
comparative distribution and periodical migrations, and giving an outline of 
the geographical range of 376 species.” By G. Peter Moore, F.L.S. 4to. 
London : Van Voorst, 1879. 
