Abstract
MR. EVANS'S name is a sufficient guarantee of accuracy, and this little volume, intended primarily for schools, calls for no adverse criticism. The considerable advances in our knowledge of British birds which have been won and “consolidated” during the last twenty years or so have all been taken account of, with due caution as to the present tendency to discover innumerable local forms and to recognise plenty of sub-species. In point of method Mr. Evans adopts a new plan; he deals with the birds according to their families, giving a separate section to each family, but not to each species. In this way the learner gets a better idea of the British bird-world as a whole, and of the several departments of it, than he could have done from the older books, where the interest was concentrated on the individual species. No doubt those older books, with their pleasant talks about the ways of a species, will always be both welcome and necessary; but this one has a value of its own, and is at the present moment the only cheap handbook which is fully up to date. The illustrations are the least attractive part of it, and much space might have been saved for the letterpress by the omission of some photographs by which nothing seems to be gained.
The Birds of Britain: Their Distribution and Habits.
By A. H. Evans. Pp. xii + 275. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1916.) Price 4s. net.
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The Birds of Britain: Their Distribution and Habits . Nature 97, 540 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/097540a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/097540a0