London Birds and Beasts, by J. T. Tristram Valentine, with
a Preface by F. E. Beddard, F.R.S. (Horace Cox), is a collection of miscellaneous short papers descriptive of animals and insects added to the Zoological Society's collection between the years 1889 mid 1892, with a series noting the habits of birds common in London, such as the thrush, sparrow, wood-pigeon, starling, and rook ; and an " Appendix " of extracts from old writers on natural history, in whose quaint stories the author of these notes was interested. The notes on the Zoo are pleasantly written, but give little that cannot be found under the same headings—such as "The Manatee," "The Gaur," "The Aye-Aye "—in any good book on natural history, though this is in one sense a merit, if the book be used, as Mr. Beddard suggests, for a guide to the Zoo. But the list of papers is too short to take the place of a handbook. Mr. Valentine Tristram quotes an interesting account of the capture of the young gaur presented to the Society in 1889 by Sir Cecil Clementi Smith. It was taken, with twenty-three others, by order of the Sultan of Pahang, who employed fifteen hundred men to enclose a whole herd on a promontory skirted by the river. The gaurs when enclosed fought with one another, and twelve were killed in a battle which lasted all night. But anecdotes of the "life and adventures" of the Zoo animals themselves are rare in these notes, which hardly bear out the promise suggested by the local title of "London Birds and Beasts." The London crow is omitted from separate notices of London birds. The notes on the other species contain nothing new, though Mr. Beddard in his preface mentions a curious habit that
migrant birds have of alighting in the Zoological Garden", attracted by the calls of the captive birds there. A digression to the Fame Islands gives the practical information that permission to visit them can be had on application to Mr. Cuthbertson, Seahouses, North Sunderland, or at the 'Crewe Arms Hotel,' Barn- borough, on the payment of a small fee, and signing an agreement not to take eggs or molest the birds.
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