Considered as a compilation, it is valuable, though its title-page unfortunately promises more than any work on natural history ever yet performed, and so prepares the way for disappointment. Mr. Samuels appears to be a zealous and accurate ornithologist, with plenty of field-knowledge, but very little descriptive power. Being apparently conscious of this, he is shy of delineating the rarer birds, because he does not personally know them, while he passes hastily over the more familiar, because "their habits are known to all." This last piece of abstinence is greatly to be regretted. For a local manual has two main objects, to furnish to young students the means of identifying species, and to give remote students the means of comparing species. For both purposes the commonest birds are most important, since everybody begins with these. A boy wishes, for instance, to identify the wood-thrush; or a Southern naturalist wishes to compare its traits with those of the mocking-bird. He finds that in this book the wood-thrush is dismissed with two pages, while there is a quotation from Wilson seven pages long upon the habits of the mocking-bird. When will naturalists learn that the first duty of each observer is to make a thorough study of his own locality, and meanwhile to let the rest of the world alone? One looks in vain in these pages for any good description of the song-sparrow, the blue-bird, the blue-jay, the kingfisher, or the oriole. These birds are allowed but a page or two each, although, for some reason, more liberal space is given to the robin and the crow. But there is no bird so familiar that it does not offer subjects for interesting speculation and study. The pretty nocturnal trill of the hairbird; the remarkable change which civilization has wrought in the habits of the cliff-swallow; the disputed question whether the cat-bird is or is not a mocker;--these and a hundred similar points relate to very common birds, and are accordingly unnoticed by Mr. Samuels. Eggs really interest him, and his descriptions and measurements of these constitute the most original part of the book, and are highly valuable. On the other hand, the notes of birds are very inadequately described, and sometimes not at all; he does not mention that the loon has a voice.