NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
The description of the vertebrate animals of British India, in eight volumes, is—by this concluding and fourth volume on birds—now completed. India has not only been the trainingground for our soldiers, but has been an area—and long will be — productive of the best traditions in zoology and zoologists. We need not recapitulate the well-known names that were made in India and have become household words in zoology, and which, with perhaps the exception of Ferdinand Sloliczka, have been those of our own countrymen; nor is it necessary to recall the many instances in which the first zoological inspiration was received in that torrid clime which one usually leaves, but which one never forgets. Again, its field naturalists, or in other words its sportsmen, have always been renowned and will continue to exist; in fact, our Indian Empire is a zoological influence from which few sympathetic spirits have escaped.
In the present work the number of Indian birds regarded as distinct species is estimated as 1626, which fairly agrees with Hume's enumeration in his 'Catalogue' of 1879, which reached a nett total of 1608; and perhaps this expresses a somewhat synthetic concord between good authorities, when the personal equation of individual discrimination between species and varieties is considered. It must also be remembered that of the four volumes devoted to Aves in this series, the first and second were contributed by Mr. E.W. Oates, and the remaining two by Mr. Blanford, so that the general specific consensus of opinion is still more marked. Vol IV., now before us, is devoted to the gallinaceous, wading, and swimming birds.
Ornithological publications such as these are of course primarily intended for the Indian or Oriental student; they may
