Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/168

146 an unavoidable sameness in most descriptions of the 12th August or the 1st September. But this is made amends for by the account which is furnished of the sport to be obtained in the marshes or at the mouths of tidal rivers, and various shooting excursions in different parts of the Continent.

The chapter on catching Foxes in France for the English market (vol. ii., p. 49) will have an interest for those who prefer hunting to shooting, while the concluding chapters in the second volume on sea-fishing will furnish amusement to all lovers of the long-line.

Although the author is a keen sportsman, and evidently a good shot, we infer from his book that he is no naturalist, for we miss the accuracy that would characterise a close observer of Nature in many passages wherein he fails to discriminate the species of birds shot by him, while he makes no note of their peculiarities of habit, call or flight. Some attention to these points we think would have heightened the value of the book in the eyes of many readers.

We should have been glad also to have seen a list of the provincial names of birds, with the localities in which the same are in use, and which "Wildfowler," from his many opportunities, might well have furnished. Visitors to the coast, even naturalists of some experience, are now and then puzzled to identify a bird from its local name without actual examination of a specimen; and a curious collection of such names might be made from the vocabularies of local fishermen and professional gunners. We throw out this hint for the consideration of some of our readers.

author of this entertaining work well observes, "To anyone who has eyes, there is much to see in this small but infinitely varied England, so much that, as Emerson says, to see it well 'needs a hundred years.'" He has done, therefore, acceptable service, which will be recognized and acknowledged by many a