BIRDS. 



BY 



PROFESSOR ANDR. WAGNER, OF MUNICH. 



WE have already in our former Report announced the 

 appearance of a work that is of the greatest importance to 

 the ornithologist, from its conducing both to the elevation of 

 his literature and the determining of species, and have 

 now again at our very outset to notice it in a more detailed 

 manner. It bears the title of the Genera of Birds, bv 

 George Robert Gray. Illustrated with aboiit 350 plates, 

 by D. W. Mitchell. London, since 1844. 



This work, commenced in May, 1844, was to have appeared in monthly 

 parts, yet from the past year we have only the first five numbers lying before 

 us. It is restricted to no systematic order, but places together the most 

 diversified groups, such e. g., as in the first part, the Buteoninae, Ploceiuae, 

 (Edicueminse, and Glareolinse. Neither plates nor text are therefore paged, 

 and the description of each group is so terminated, that upon the conclusion 

 of the whole work it may be bound conformably to the arrangement pursued 

 in the introductory "List of the Genera of Birds." The characters of the 

 families, subfamilies, genera, and subgenera are given in detail ; but of the 

 species only the names are adduced, and one or the other authority and figure 

 quoted. Since Gray, in accordance with the recent English and French 

 custom, bestows the value of genera upon subgenera, and has thus com- 

 pletely characterized them, one is spared, in the employment of his work, the 

 great trouble of hunting out the diagnoses of these genera, dispersed to an 

 immoderate extent throughout the most diversified publications, and learns 

 besides the number at once of the species that belong to such a genus, reference 

 being also made to the writings in which they have been described and figured. 



