Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/417

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massive and beautiful volume is an addition to the series known as 'Atlanti Diversi per la Gioventù Studiosa,' editi da Ulrico Hoepli. It is written by an ornithologist who is not a stranger to these pages, and, published in a moderately cheap form, with a wealth of illustration, supplies a good handbook for the study of continental ornithology. The first section to p. 165 constitutes a general introduction to the subject, and refers to general structure, mimicry, dimorphism, hybridity, geographical distribution, migration, and classification, among other subjects; while an exhaustive bibliography is also appended. Five hundred and sixty-five species are descriptively enumerated, fifty coloured plates are given, and many blocks illustrate the text. The three concluding plates are devoted to eggs; the other plates each contains a number of birds, arranged in a somewhat ancient style, and not quite approaching the record form in either chromo-lithography or coloured photography of to-day, but still of a useful nature for recognition: iconographic more than absolutely artistic.

The author, however, has brought his letterpress thoroughly up to date. A knowledge of the Italian language, so far as descriptive phraseology is concerned, is not a difficult acquisition, even for those to whom Dante and Tasso in the original are sealed prophets. We English, as a rule, are perhaps the worst linguists in the world, and are meek before our own hairdressers and restaurant waiters, who are probably, in a colloquial sense, the best. We may find some solace in the reflection that the men who really know their own language are incomparably fewer than those who have a facile smattering of other tongues, and that to all inheritors of Babel the key to scientific diction is not a too difficult quest. There is sometimes a Sir R. Burton—but