NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
A trip to South Africa is always enjoyable, especially if a halt is made at the Canary Islands, which can now be easily done by travelling on board one of the intermediate steamers of the Union-Castle line. Mr. Harris has visited both spots as an ornithologist, relying on his camera and not on his gun for the spoils he brought home, which constitute the photographs supplying the material for fifty-five plates. These illustrations alone were well worth publishing, but the author has also supplied some excellent field observations, especially as to nesting habits.
Mr. Meade-Waldo has already published a list of the birds to be found on the Canary Islands, and Mr. Harris has now written a good supplement on a different branch of the science. Nature has not exhausted herself on these islands. We have sailed along the coast of Fuerteventura, but even then did not realize the grandeur of its dreariness as we have by reading some of the pages in this book. It is the fate of most travelling naturalists to visit a region at a wrong or disappointing season, and not to do all that was expected. Mr. Harris seems to have had a similar experience, but he secured photographs of many nests and eggs, that of the Houbara Bustard being one of the most charming and realistic.
In South Africa, Mr. Harris found his happiest hunting-ground in the neighbourhood of the Knysna Forest, a region far too little visited by either ornithologist or entomologist. We are glad to see illustrations of the nest and eggs of the Secretary Bird, and the nesting site of the Hammerkop, though both require larger space than can be afforded in any ordinary book to give a real impression of their massive structure. The author also paid considerable attention to the shore-nesting birds, and gives instances of the intelligent manner in which some Plovers seek
