88 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
The Natural History of Selborne. By the Rev. Gilbert White, M.A., rearranged 
and classified under subjects by Charles Mosley. Elliot Stock. Price 
6s. net. 
The late Mr. Grant Allen expressed the opinion that the value of White’s 
“ Selborne ” is now mainly literary. If this opinion, with which we do not agree, 
were well founded, there would be no raison d'etre for the present work. As, 
however, there are many small points on which our modern knowledge has 
corrected White’s statements, we think it a pity to re-issue his book, in a form 
intended presumably for use by young naturalists, without any notes as to such 
corrections or new identifications. This edition contains the whole of the 
“ Natural History,” even to the extent of inserting under the head of “ Miscellany ” 
some passages of a merely complimentary character, which, in their detached 
position, appear objectless. “ The Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk ” is 
added ; and, by a happy thought, the frontispiece of the first edition, as to the 
possible presence in which of a portrait of the author a controversy was formerly 
carried on in our pages. It is neatly bound and well printed, though we notice 
“ Adamson ” on p. 125 for “ Adanson.” It is strange, however, that Mr. Mosley, 
in his brief “ Introduction,” falls, like his predecessors, into a series of little 
blunders. Not to dwell on the fact that W’hite’s college is not usually termed 
“the Oriel College,” instead of being “six years Senior Proctor,” the naturalist 
was Junior Proctor for one year, and “ The Wakes,” the house in which he died, 
was not “ the selfsame house in which he first saw the light,” as he was born at 
the Vicarage. 
Oologia Universalis Palaarctiar. Part I. By George Krause. Complete in 
about 150 parts. Williams and Norgate. Price is. 6d. net each, or is. 3d. 
net. by subscription. 
This will be a magnificent monograph on the eggs of the birds of the Palsearctic 
Region. It is to contain two or three plates in each part, and is to be completed 
in about two years. Each species is represented by a separate coloured plate and 
a page of text in German and English, with synonymy, geographical distribution, 
breeding-season, nest characters and variations in size, &c. , in tabular form. In 
this specimen part there are four species, Aqitila chrysaetus, represented by figures 
of five eggs, the Raven by sixteen, the Quail by twenty and the Thrush by twenty- 
five figures. These plates are exquisite, and both plates and text are printed on 
loose sheets of card. It is much to be regretted that the text should have been 
left to someone quite ignorant of the English language. The Golden Eagle, for 
instance, is also named “ Black-backet; Eagle, Bingtailed Eagle” ; its eggs are 
said to be in shape “ a full roundish oval with a nearly equatorial dopp-height ; ” 
their shell “ rough and strong, sometimes the pores are oblong like tears of 
needles”; the nest, “a bulky eyry, careless constructed of sticks, that is over- 
built every year ; with a fine lining of brushwood, grass and wool ” : whilst under 
“ Remarks ” it is stated that “ Almost ever the eggs of a set vary very consider- 
able in colour, size and shape.” The remark as to the Quail that “the female 
only breeds, the male is polygamous,” is, at first blush, somewhat puzzling, until, 
glancing at the German equivalent, we realise that “ broods ” is meant. 
Nature Knowledge in Modern Poetry , being Chapters on Tennyson , Wordsworth , 
Matthew Arnold and Lowell, as Exponents of Nature Study. By Alexander 
Mackie. Longmans, Green and Co. Price 2s. 6d. net. 
This little book consists of ten appreciative papers reprinted from The Scottish 
Field, the first four of which deal with Tennyson as botanist, entomologist, 
ornithologist and geologist respectively, whilst the birds of each of the three other 
poets are dealt with in a chapter apart from their general natural-history allusions. 
Of the four poets, Wordsworth evinces the deepest love for Nature and Lowell 
perhaps the prettiest fancy in his allusions, while Matthew Arnold has but a few 
similes drawn from her store, and Tennyson had undoubtedly the widest scientific 
knowledge. Nothing in the published biographies of the two great contempo- 
