234 
NATURE NOTES. 
\inless a specimen has been sent him and duly verified. Here is a chance for 
snail-loving Selbornians : let them help to fill up the gaps ! Some will be easy 
enough, for Mr. Roebuck has not yet seen a specimen of the common garden 
snail {Helix aspersa) from North Wiltshire, West Suffolk, or Radnorshire ! Will 
none take pity on his almost judicial ignorance and send him a few ? The common 
field slug, too, is missing from his tables for many localities in which it cannot fail 
to occur. 
Finally, there are the plates. We are not able to say what the coloured ones 
are like in this edition, not having been favoured with a coloured copy, but if they 
are executed after the crude manner of those in the first edition, we say, save your 
money and buy a plain copy, since it is possible to recognize your shells by the 
uncoloured figures. 
Whatever little shortcomings Mr. Adams’s book may have, it will prove emi- 
nently useful to beginners, who by its aid will be able to advance to better things. 
Nor is its price absolutely prohibitive. 
B. B. Woodward. 
ANOTHER BIRD BOOK.- 
The idea and scope of this pocket volume is good ; and large as is the 
number of books on British birds already before the public, a reliable handbook 
of a size which one could slip into one’s pocket when visiting a collection, or bent 
on a short ornithological excursion, would certainly be useful. But to be useful 
it should be complete, and not be liable to fall short of exactly the piece of 
information that the searcher may be in need of. In the preface the author tells 
us that nearly all the species on the list of British birds have been described, but 
he has been hardly consistent in his choice of those thus treated. For instance, 
although the black- throated wheatear — a bird which has occurred only once in these 
islands — is described, the isabelline wheatear is not, although a very few words 
would have sufficed to point out the characteristics which distinguish it from the 
common wheatear ; and it is just these points of information — to enable us to detect 
a rare stranger — which we require in a book of this kind. We are surprised to find 
such species as the ortolan, the bee eater, the roller, the goshawk, the lapwing, 
the eared grebe, the little gull and the ivory gull (of which “scarcely more than 
thirty examples have been obtained ”), not to mention others, without a word of 
description. Indeed, the members of the order Gavia;, as well as the game birds, 
have received very inadequate notice. It may be urged that space had to be 
considered. But surely space could have been better economized in other ways. 
It was not necessary to devote half a page, more or less, to a sketch of the life 
histories of such well-known species as the song thrush and blackbird, and such 
sentences as “ The glad song, uttered while soaring upward, is well known,” 
might well have been omitted from the account of the skylark in a concise 
handbook. It is hardly correct to say that the song of the blackbird is usually 
heard again during autumn, for the blackbird is among the rarest of autumn 
singers ; nor do we think it is ever truly gregarious in winter. The sketches, if 
included at all, should be complete, but we have nothing about the well-known 
fact that the song thrush is migratory. Indeed, sketches of the habits of the birds 
seems to us quite out of place in a concise handbook, and beyond the scope of 
the work. A few words upon the distribution of each species, an indication of 
the season at which it is to be found with us, and a short description of its nest 
and eggs would amply suffice for the working ornithologist, who could more 
profitably read about the habits of the birds in larger works, where they are fully 
and adequately described. At all events, if inserted at all, the sketches .should 
have been appended to all the sirecies, as far as the known facts permitted, so as 
to supply the young ornithologist with information upon points with which he 
* A Concise Handbook of British Birds, by II. Kirkc .Swann, fcap 8vo, pp. 
viii., 210. London : John Whcldon & Co., 1896. Brice 3s. fid. 
