seen more than one or two pairs anywhere in the neighbourhood this spring.—Henry Doubleday; Epping, May, 1843.
Note on the Kestril. The commencement of the nest of a kestril (Falco tinnunculus) having been noticed near Oxford, a gin-trap was set in it, and five male birds were taken on successive days, without the occurrence of a female. The last of the number was a young bird of the year, in complete female plumage. I may mention that I have noticed a difference in the changes of plumage in this bird; the plumage of all the young males is, I believe, identical with that of the female during the first year—but in some the narrow black bars on the tail remain through the second year, though the ground colour has changed to grey; while in others the black bars disappear altogether, except the broad one near the tip, with the first change of plumage; and the male colouring is at once complete.—F. Holme; Oxford, May 15, 1843.
Note on the occurrence of the Eared Grebe at Oxford. A fine male specimen of the eared grebe (Podiceps auritus), in full nuptial plumage, was shot in Port Meadow, close to Oxford, about a month since.—Id. May 31, 1843.
Notice of White's Selborne.[1]
White's Selborne! There is a charm about the very name! It is intertwined with our earliest knowledge of Natural History; it calls up the most pleasant ideas of birds, and their nests, and their migrations: and wherefore is it that this unassuming name, this unpretending volume, has such a charm? Why is each of its readers ready to say of himself,—"And I also am a naturalist"? Is it not that the author has stripped his subject of all the pedantry in which others had invested it? Well might Linnæus say, "verbositas præsentis'sæculi calamitas artis;" and if true then, how much more true now! It is this verbosity—this "vox et præterea nihil"—that disgusts an enquirer, and leads him to look on Natural History as a science of words rather than of things. Then again, the constant appeal to the dead languages, when our own affords words and phrases adapted to harmonious and expressive description, is a constant stumbling-block to the learner. White, though a peculiarly elegant scholar, a man whose memory was stored and overflowing with classic lore, writes the most pure, unpretending, and graceful English that ever subserved the purpose of innocent instruction.
White's attention was ever on the alert to observe: nothing seems to escape him. The arrival and departure of birds, the commence-
- ↑ The Natural History of Selborne. By the late Rev. Gilbert White, M.A. A new edition, with Notes by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, M.A., F.L.S., &c. London: Van Voorst. 1843.
