Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/355

Rh of course can be sifted too finely sometimes, but perhaps a large mesh seems the best net for enclosing ornithological narratives.

The first edition was completed in November, 1889, and then enumerated 367 species considered as British. In this edition the total is raised to 384, and some of the new additions will be familiar to the readers of this magazine. Of the 384 species described, "those which have bred within the United Kingdom during the present century may be taken as 199 (if the extinct Great Auk is included); about 74 non-breeding wanderers have occurred fewer than six times, and 66 others are more or less infrequent visitors; while 45 species annually make their appearance on migration or during the colder months, in some portion of our long narrow group of islands or upon the surrounding waters." A too insular standpoint for studying our British avine fauna is negatived by the inclusion of three coloured maps. The first and second are bathy-orographical of the British Isles and Europe respectively, showing the comparative elevation of the land in the United Kingdom, and the depth of the surrounding seas; the third is a North Polar Chart to facilitate the enquiry into the range of the birds which breed in the Arctic regions.

We need say nothing further of a book of which a first edition of three thousand copies was exhaused in eight years. Apart from the ornithological bookshelf, it is a volume that should also be in every school and village library in these islands.

seem to hear too little now of the natural history of such a glorious county as Devonshire, and certainly so in the pages of the 'Zoologist.' For years it was the home of Montagu. It is, as Mr. Dixon remarks, rich in species so far as sedentary birds are concerned. "But the same can scarcely be said of migratory species, the county being very unfavourably situated for them. Indeed, next to Cornwall, I should feel inclined to class Devonshire as the poorest littoral county in England for normal migratory birds, lying, as it does, too far to the south-west." But, as