214 
Recently Published Ornithological Works. 
is enough to make the whole caravan take to flight and 
remove to some distance. But the Indians of San Carlos 
know better than to scare them away with firearms. They 
get into their canoes a little after midnight, creep silently up 
the river, and under cover of the night disembark beneath 
the trees where the Ibises are roosting. Then, when at 
break of day the birds wake up and begin to stir, and to be 
visible, the Indians pick them off with poisoned darts from 
their blowing-canes in great numbers, before the bulk of the 
flock takes alarm ; so that they mostly return to the villages 
with great piles of dead Ibises ; and, although this lasts only 
two or three days, the quantity killed is so great that, what 
with fresh and what with barbecued game, everybody feasts 
royally for a fortnight; whereas throughout the rest of the 
year the dearth of provisions exceeds what I have experi¬ 
enced elsewhere in South America.” 
28. Whymper 1 s ‘ Egyptian Birds. 1 
[Egyptian Birds, for the most Part seen in the Nile Valley. By 
Charles Whymper. London : Adam and Charles Black, 1909. 1 vol. 
8vo.] 
Our associate Mr. Charles Whymper has produced a very 
nice book, which will, no doubt, be in the hands of many of 
the visitors who go up the Nile this winter. Selecting fifty 
of the birds most commonly met with on the banks of the 
great river, he gives us artistic drawings of them and accom¬ 
panies them with well-written popular accounts of their 
habits and manners. As stated by the author in his 
“ Foreword/’ this does not claim to be a scientific work, 
“ it is meant for the wayfaring man who, travelling through 
this ancient land, wishes to learn something of the birds he 
meets with.” Mr. Whymper, therefore, does not interfere 
with the labours of several of our correspondents, who are 
striving to attain a full knowledge of the Egyptian Avifauna 
in order to produce a complete account of it. 
As will be noticed by those who inspect the volume, most 
of the fifty species of which figures are given are well known 
