From JOHN C. NIMMO'S List.
IMPORTANT WORK ON BRITISH BIRDS.
NOW READY.
One Volume, Demy 8vo, buckram cloth, gilt top, with Thirty-five Coloured
Plates, price ₤2 2s. net.
A Handbook of British Birds
Showing the Distribution of the Resident and Migratory Species in the
British Islands, with an Index to the Records of the Rarer Visitants.
By J.E. HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S.,
Member of the British Ornithologists' Union.
NEW AND REVISED EDITION.
With 85 Coloured Plates carefully reproduced from Original
Drawings by the late Professor Schlegel.
Extract from Author's Introduction.
Following upon the daily exigencies of official work, the preparation of this volume has occupied the leisure hours of many years, and as an attempt to show in one volume the precise status of every so-called British bird, distinguishing the rare and accidental visitants from the residents and annual migrants, it conveys information of a kind which is not to be found in any other work on British Birds.
Divided into two parts, the first portion deals with "British Birds properly so called, being Residents, Periodical Migrants, and Annual Visitants"; the second portion includes the "Rare and Accidental Visitants"; and a special feature of the book is that in the case of every rare bird a list of occurrences is given, from the publication of the earliest records (so far as has been ascertained) down to the end of the year 1900. The reader is thereby enabled to estimate at a glance the precise nature of the claim which any given species has to be considered "British." Some notion of the labour entailed may be formed when it is stated that the number of references in Part I. amounts to 1500; in Part II. to 2325; and in the whole work to 3825 or thereabouts.
The measurements of every species are given in four dimensions, namely, the length from tip of bill to end of tail; length of bill; length of wing from carpal joint to end of longest primary; and length of leg, or rather the exposed portion of it (the tarsus), which is most readily seen.
The Publisher has illustrated the volume by a series of thirty-five plates in colour, reproduced from original drawings by the late Professor Schlegel, representing the heads of two hundred and sixty-two species (in all four hundred and seventy-seven figures), showing the plumage of both sexes, as well as old and young when necessary, with a fidelity which he ventures to think has never been hitherto approached in a work at the price of this volume, and which are so accurate as to enable an observer to immediately identify a bird by their aid. They have been executed in response to a repeated demand for a book on British Birds with accurately coloured plates in one volume. This the booksellers have been hitherto unable to supply, the expensively coloured works of Gould and the late Lord Lilford, each costing not less than forty guineas, being altogether beyond the reach of those who cannot afford to pay more than forty shillings for their desideratum.
London: JOHN C. NIMMO, 14, King William Street, Strand.
