NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
With this volume Mr. Ogilvie-Grant completes his task, and describes the remaining species of the order Gallinæ or True Game-birds, as well as that curious and aberrant form the Hoatzin, and the Bustard Quails; in fact, as Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, the editor, remarks:—"His volumes contain the names of every species of Game-birds known up to the present date, so that they may be considered in the light of a small monograph of the Gallinæ."
In these days, when so much popular Natural History is written,—so to say,—secondhand, we do not always find the author an admitted specialist on his subject as is the case with the writer of these volumes; nor do we usually obtain such exhaustive treatment as has been devoted to them. Consequently we have in this 'Hand-book to the Game-birds,' not only a complete enumeration and description of the species, but also a nomenclature revised to date, and this, to working naturalists who are not specially ornithologists, is a considerable boon. Another welcome feature is to be found in the copious extracts given from the published writings of field naturalists and observers as to the life-habits of the species, and here we would fain have wished that bibliographical references might have been added to the same. These descriptive narratives give a life and colour to the monograph. We leave the mere skin with the description, and are then transported to bird-life in many climes and under the guidance of competent and accurate observers. In the years to come, when some zoological Gibbon shall devote his life to the composition of an exhaustive history of animal existence, the scattered field-notes now in many languages, often buried in little known or less read books, and frequently published in non-scientific journals, will perhaps be brought together, and such a work may be expected
