NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
This volume introduces the series about to be published on the 'Fauna of South Africa,' edited by Mr. W.L. Sclater, the Director of the South African Museum, Cape Town, and possesses a melancholy interest by the fate of its author, who was killed at Ladysmith during the late siege.
Ornithology is rapidly becoming—even if it is not already—much less an esoteric science, to be followed only by students of means, who found it possible to acquire a charming but all too expensive a literature. We already possessed Sharpe's edition of Layard, and the excellent 'Notes on the Birds of Damara Land,' by Anderson, revised by Mr. J.H. Gurney; but these were practically the only handbooks on the South African subject. There was a large literature, as may be seen by the bibliography given in this volume, but it pertained to the possession of a specialist's library; while the ponderous, expensive, and somewhat unreliable volumes of Le Vaillant were not only outside the reach of most, but represented an archaic form of the science. Consequently this book supplies a real want, as any traveller or collector in that now unsettled region will gratefully acknowledge.
The classification pursued is very largely an eclectic one, based upon the proposed systems of Messrs. Sclater and Sharpe; the plan and arrangement followed is that of Mr. Oates in the volumes on "Birds" in the 'Fauna of British India,' while a very welcome feature of the book is the quite unusual amount of information afforded under the heading "Habits." This subject should, and probably will, incite many observers to fresh efforts, for the bionomical story of the South African Birds is yet very largely to be told. Much has still also to be added to the distributional areas of the birds. Thus the so-called "Mountain
