Unleitung zur Beobachtung der Vogelwelt

Abstract

THE author of this work is Dr. Zimmer, keeper of the Royal Zoological Museum in Breslau. On the first zoological excursion he undertook with his pupils in the university of that town (where he is also lecturer, as well as museum custos) they fell in with a chaffinch singing in a tree. On his demanding from them the name of the songster, the word “nightingale” was ventured on after a prolonged silence! The little episode, which indicated, to his surprise, their lamentable lack of knowledge of the commonest local birds, induced Dr. Zimmer to prepare this büchlein as an introduction to ornithological observing. In some respects it reminds one of the section in “Hints to Travellers,” issued by the Royal Geographical Society on the same subject, though directed to a somewhat different class of observers. One, however, lays the book down with the somewhat unsatisfactory feeling that it is assumed that the student will be made into an ornithologist by following the instructions—all of them excellent and the result of experience—therein contained, rather than that the observer, who must be born so, and is already, if that be his bent, an ornithologist, in embryo, before he is aware of it, requires proper guiding only.

Unleitung zur Beobachtung der Vogelwelt.

By Dr. Carl Zimmer. Pp. iv + 134. (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1910.) Price 1.25 marks.