SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
155 
the “ oppressive sameness,” would be far more apparent than it 
is in England. Perhaps we may say that the chief beauty of the 
British avifauna is a modest beauty, and this constitutes its 
greatest charm in the minds of many of its admirers. In review- 
ing its modern character, while we allow that the severity of our 
winter climate, and the almost total absence of native evergreen 
trees (except firs) and shrubs renders our inland parts, in winter, 
less suitable than they might be for any other than hardy small 
birds ; yet, we must not overlook those dozen beautiful, secret 
warblers, besides various members of other families, which come 
to delight us with their songs and with their charming individu- 
ality, and to hide their nests in our wealth of summer vegetation. 
Those who have not yet taken up the study of our small birds 
and wish to gain an idea of its delights, cannot do better than 
read Mr. Warde Fowler’s pamphlet on the marsh warbler, and 
learn therein the lasting interest and pleasure which the study 
of that little brown bird has brought to more than one field 
naturalist. 
These pages have been penned, first, because I think that a 
perusal of Lost British Birds would give a stranger, and anyone 
unacquainted with the subject, an unduly unfavourable idea of 
our avifauna ; and, secondly, because I do not think that 
sufficient importance is attached in the pamphlet to the vast 
change which must necessarily come over the avifauna of a 
country when the face of that country is altered by drainage 
and greatly increased cultivation. 
O. V. Aplin. 
SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
A Narrow Narrow World (Swan Sonnenschein), is the first of the Band of 
Mercy Prize Series (to consist of six half-crown volumes) which Miss Edith Car- 
rington has undertaken to write. We have here in narrative form accounts of 
the inhabitants of an ash-heap, and of the little boy who played there. The 
different insects talk pleasantly, and so do the human beings ; and a great deal of 
information is conveyed in an attractive manner, as is usually the case in Miss 
Carrington’s books. The boy’s father takes what we cannot help calling an unduly 
severe line in regard to collectors, and we regret this the more because an exagger- 
ated tone in matters of this kind is likely to cause unfavourable comment, and to 
diminish the usefulness of this series of volumes. We are sorry that Miss Carrington’s 
text is disfigured by a large number of “illustrations ” which do not illustrate — a 
fault which we have observed in other publications of the same firm. The worn- 
out feeble blocks entitled “A Rainbow” (p. 143), the “Moth” on p. 125, and 
nearly all the page illustrations, headings, and tail-pieces, are distinct dis^ure- 
ments ; and the other cuts — a job lot brought together from all sorts of places — 
do not enhance the appearance of the book. 
Poems and Lyrics of Nature (Walter .Scott, is.), is the latest addition to the 
“Canterbury Poets.” It deserves a long notice, but as that is impossible, we 
will not defer a short one, because we hope that many will be induced by our 
recommendation to take it with them as a holiday companion. Mrs. Kinder 
has done her editing well, and her introduction is interesting and suggestive. 
