Bird - Life in a Southern County. By Charles Dixon. (Walter Scott.
6s.)—There are certainly few more enthusiastic observers of birds than Mr. Dixon, and few who record and publish their ornithological experiences more regularly. It is but a few months since we noticed two other volumes from his industrious pen. The book now before us records, in a familiar and discursive manner, notes made during eight years' residence on the South Coast of Devonshire, and upon various expeditions into all parts of that charming county. There is already a well-known work on the "Birds of Devon," by Messrs. D'Urban and Mathew; but doubtless many persons will read Mr. Dixon's book with pleasure who would regard the former work as too scientific and too dry. Mr. Dixon thoroughly appreciates the beauties of Devon and the pleasure of watching birds, though his writing rather lacks that charm of style which a critical reader might desire. But he knows the county well, and no inhabitant of Devon (be his tastes inclined towards natural history) can fail to read this book without interest. Mr. Dixon claims for Devon- shire the title of " classic ground," since it was the home of Colonel Montagu, one of the fathers of British ornithology, ranking as a field naturalist next after the Rev. Gilbert White. Devonshire, with its extensive sea-coast and uncultivated cliffs, its wild moorlands and well-wooded river banks, presents many attractive features to the birds. Yet lying so far west, it is out of the route of migrants to and from the Continent. The nightingale is quite unknown west of Somerset ; and many other birds which are common enough in the East of Britain, as the whinchat, the redstart, and the wheatear, become by comparison scarce birds in Devonshire. But Devonshire has its compensations : the buzzard is not yet exterminated, the ring-ouzel haunts Dartmoor, and the Dartford warbler, perhaps, may yet frequent some secluded and goraey situations. Mr. Dixon mentions the dipper as a rare bird in Devonshire, yet we have it on good authority that it abounds on the Tamar and else- where. We may recommend this book as the work of a very careful observer, but we do not quite understand why the author chooses to write in the first person plural with occasional lapses into the first person singular.
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