Welsh Journals

bibliography. Likewise, in his. list of observatories, he omits the oldest in Britain, Skokholm, although he refers to it in the text and includes an illustration, not one of the best. The book is profusely illustrated, as Hamlyn all-colour paperbacks' are, by Pat Oxenham. Projects with Birds. Peter Goodfellow. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. £ 1.95. Eighty bird watching projects are described. Project 1 considers nest boxes. Project 31 suggests a survey of milk top thieves- tit or woodpecker. Project 52, a study of sexual display; 53--of aggressive display. Other projects deal with counting birds, photo- graphing birds, ringing birds, working out flight-speeds, collecting bird stamps, caring for injured or oiled birds. The reader is urged to help with 'Operation Seafarer' or write to the Oiled Seabird Research Unit, or to contact R.S.P.B. and County Naturalists' Trusts, but the only Trust he lists in his "Addresses for Birdwatchers is the West Wales Naturalists' Trust. Minor blemishes pale beside the astonishing reversal of symbols for male and female. Otherwise a book to stimulate interest in the budding birdwatcher. Animals in Danger. John Sparks. Hamlyn, London. 50p. This pocket Red Data Book gives a broad background to the subject of rarity and extinction. The author reminds us that extinction is not a modem phenomenon and that 99% of the species that have existed since life began have become extinct through natural causes: 76 animals have vanished in the last 50 years. No species has a passport to eternity! Extinction is an essential part of evolution. Our concern is that man has accelerated the processes of extinction, and the author surveys these processes, continent by continent. He takes a gloomy look at the future but ends on a more cheerful note with a list of conservation successes. There are some silly spelling mistakes and the illustrations of the Takahe and Kakapo have been confused, but this is a handy book for the conservationist-which is the 100th all-colour Hamlyn paperback. Eggs of British Birds. Colin Matheson and James A. Bateman. National Museum of Wales. This is the sixth edition of a booklet originally written by Colin Matheson, former Keeper of Zoology at the National Museum of Wales, now revised by his successor. It deals with the collections of eggs of British birds in the Museum, which now include a fine collection, from birds which have nested in Pem- brokeshire, that formerly belonged to the late Capt. Jack Howell, of Tenby. There is a paragraph warning would-be collectors of the pro- visions of the Protection of Birds Act. Shells and Shell Collecting. S. Peter Dance. Hamlyn, London. £ 1.75. Some 90,000 species of molluscs-creatures' consisting of a hard shell and a soft body-have adapted themselves to habitats ranging from