Annals of Bird - We. By Charles Dixon. (Chapman and Hall.) —We
have a pleasant remembrance of Mr. Dixon's "Our Rarer Birds," and find an equal pleasure in Annals of Bird-We. There always seems, it is true, a sense of incompleteness about books on birds : we are thankful for what we can get, but necessarily the line must be drawn somewhere, and one misses a great deal about some birds while learning much about others. In such a comprehensive subject as the annals of bird-life, many birds can only be mentioned by name or in groups, unless the volume is to swell to an unwieldy size. As we have said before, we are thankful for what we can get, and if a volume of three hundred pages appears highly condensed, it is not Mr. Dixon's fault, but the fault of circumstances, or rather the birds. A lover and student of birds like Mr. Dixon_ is able to initiate us into many Of their secrets, and this is surely pleasure enough. We notice that a great deal of attention has been paid to the song of birds, and the periods peculiar to each bird, and a table is given of the number of days in spring on which nineteen birds sang. The calendars which the writer appends to each of the four seasons are a boon, especially in the notice they give to visiting birds. The system of dividing the Anna] into four seasons with a descriptive chapter is convenient, though it must eventually be arranged on a kind of sliding-scale by the naturalist.
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