LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. 
53 
members of the Ashmolean Society, have been kindly forwarded to us by a friend. 
They are valuable; but we cannot attempt any abstract, which is the less neces¬ 
sary, as we from time to time publish reports of the more interesting papers read 
at the above institution. Through the attention of the same gentleman, we have 
likewise been afforded [the perusal of several excellent treatises issued by the 
.Society, but which bear too old a date to require criticism. 
Farmers versus Rooks ; or, the Substance of a Trial supposed to have taken 
place in Ayrshire, before a Committee of Gentlemen, appointed by the Agricul¬ 
tural Society of that County, to consider the supposed damage done by Kooks to 
their Tenantry. By James Stuart Menteath, Esq. Ayr: M’ Cor mick land 
Carnie. 1838. 8vo. pamphlet, pp. 27. 
We presume all our readers are fully convinced of the valuable services of the 
Kook, and that the injury it causes to the crops is exceedingly trifling; but we 
are very glad to find Mr. Menteath advocating its cause before the farmers in 
a remote part of the country, where the old prejudices are still strong among the 
tenantry. Our author refers to the opinions of many eminent and experi¬ 
enced naturalists on the subject. But who “ Mr. Benrick , the celebrated na¬ 
turalist,” may be, seems a puzzle, until we are informed that he is “author of 
the well-known work on British Birds,” Thomas Bewick. Blumenbach is cited 
as “ Mr. Blumenbach and, lastly, we are informed that Mr. Knapp is “ the 
celebrated author of The Naturalist ,” Journal of a Naturalist being intended. 
Mr. Menteath is known to our readers as a correspondent of Loudon’s Magazine, 
and also of this Journal; and his father, Sir Charles G. Stuart Menteath (one 
of the “ Coronation Baronets”), of Closeburn Hall, Dumfriesshire, is an eminent 
and highly-esteemed agriculturist in the south of Scotland. 
We hope this pamphlet will be extensively circulated where it will be of mo s 
service. 
LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. 
JVIr. Yarrell’s History of British Birds has reached the eighth part.—The 
first number of Prof. Jones’s Outline of the Animal Kingdom appeared Sept. 1.—« 
Both these works, with several others, have come to hand.—Sir W. J. Hooker 
has published a fourth edition of his British Flora , in which he has included nu¬ 
merous additional observations, and embellished the whole with six plates illus¬ 
trative of the Grasses, &c. We would suggest the propriety of the plates being 
published separately, at a moderate price, for the convenience of purchasers of the 
.earlier editions, as they are certainly an important addition to the work. 
