220 Recent Ornithological Publications . 
naturalists. We have now the gratification of being able to 
congratulate Dr. Jerdon on the completion of the first volume 
of this important undertaking, which will, we are sure, do much 
to influence the study of our favourite science in British India. 
Time after time have we been applied to to point out some book 
wherein descriptions of the birds of India might be found. Time 
after time have we been obliged to answer that no such work 
was in existence. As Dr. Jerdon observes in his prospectus, to 
obtain acquaintance with what had been already ascertained re¬ 
specting the fauna of India, it was necessary to search through 
the voluminous transactions of learned societies and scien¬ 
tific journals; and, excepting to a few more favourably placed, 
even these were inaccessible. The completion of Dr. Jerdon’s 
work*, of which the first volume is now issued, will put it in 
the power of every one to acquire at a small expense, and in a 
conveniently portable form, a manual of the birds of continental 
India, sufficiently complete to serve as a guide to the field- 
naturalist anxious to discriminate the species of birds he may 
observe around him, and also of very great value to the student 
as a book of reference in his cabinet. No one, we think, will 
question Dr. Jerdon’s special fitness to engage himself in his 
present task, which will not, we may remark, be terminated 
until not only his ‘ Manual of Indian Ornithology’ is completed 
but also a whole series of similar volumes relating to the other 
classes of Indian vertebrates. Dr. Jerdon has passed more than 
twenty-five years in India, and has been known throughout that 
time as an ardent cultivator of science and a frequent writer upon 
various branches of Indian natural history. In 1839, Dr. Jerdon 
commenced a catalogue of the birds of Southern India in the 
( Madras Journal of Literature and Science/ and completed the 
same with two supplements after several years’ devotion to his 
task. In 1844 he published a volume of f Illustrations of Indian 
* The Birds of India; being a natural history of all the birds known to 
inhabit continental India, with descriptions of the species, genera, families, 
tribes, and orders, and a brief notice of such families as are not found in 
India, making it a Manual of Ornithology specially adapted for India. 
By T. C. Jerdon, Surgeon-Major, Madras Army. Vol. i. 8vo. Calcutta, 
1862, (London, Smith and Elder.) 
