1899] THE NOTES OF BIRDS 149 



alarm-cries of bird-colonies. In the present case, an English ornithologist 

 furnishes an interesting collection of his own rendering of bird-notes. Probably 

 no two persons would express the more difficult notes in exactly the same way, 

 but an approximation to truth is by no means impossible. Mr. Witchell has 

 devoted so much loving labour to the study of his favourite subject, that many 

 people besides professed naturalists will welcome the present volume, and find 

 that it stimulates their endeavours to acquaint themselves with all the different 

 notes that enliven our shores and forest haunts. The treatise is popularly 

 written, and the songs of a good many birds are expressed in musical notation. 



H. A. Macpherson. 



The latest number of the Transactions of the British Mycological Society 

 contains a summary of the Fungus Foray held at Dublin in September 1898, 

 and the papers read at the meetings. The Foray must have been conducted 

 with energy, for 160 species were added to an already existing list of 830 species 

 for the counties of Dublin and Wicklow. In the report useful references to 

 suitable neighbourhoods and to the local literature will be found. Among the 

 more important papers are those by Dr. C. B. Plowright, who acted as president 

 of the meeting. His address on the Agaricini, and a contribution on " New and 

 rare British fungi," are useful and practical. A summary of the recent work of 

 Eriksson, of Stockholm, on the Uredineae of cereal crops is particularly valuable, 

 because, during the past year, that author has given articles on the same subject 

 to almost every existing botanical magazine, till he has landed the student in a 

 hopeless maze of references ; a clear summary like this one was much needed. 

 The Dublin members, Mr. Greenwood Pirn and Dr. M'Weeney, have contributed 

 useful papers, the latter throwing light on two sclerotium diseases of the potato. 

 Two papers in the number before us are merely reprints of the British Associa- 

 tion reports of the 1898 meeting ; they are both rudimentary notes on laboratory 

 work done at Cambridge, and it seems absurd that such should be presented in 

 the same month to the British Association and again to the Mycological Society ; 

 still more superfluous that one should meet them here for at least the fourth 

 time in the literature of botany. Dr. Plowright gives obituary notices on two 

 eminent fungologists — Kev. Canon Du Port and Mr. H. T. Soppitt, with good 

 portraits. 



We have received the first number of the Polyclinic, being the journal of the 

 Medical Graduates' College, London, a journal which does not at first sight much 

 concern readers of Natural Science, however strongly they may in other capacities 

 sympathise with the aims of this admirable institution. Yet as we turn over 

 the pages with a biological eye, we feel impressed by the fact that while know- 

 ledge is manifold there is only one science. Sir William Broadbent, with the 

 progress of science for his keynote, Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, with the motto, 

 " 'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching," Dr. Miller Ord, with the 

 proverb " Docendo discimus," expound the aims of the college ; and as we pass 

 to courses of lectures we see " functions of the nervous system," " family history 

 in nervous disease," "diseases of animals," "experimental teratogeny," "dis- 

 solution of heredity," "physiology of germinal life," and much more, which 

 shows that the journal has much common ground with ours. Floreat. 



The June number of the Journal of School Geography contains, inter alia, 

 articles on Southern California, by Mr. J. F. Chamberlain ; on the geographical 

 and geological exhibition at Springfield, Mass., by Professor K. E. Dodge ; on 

 pressure, winds, and rainfall over the British Islands by Dr. A. J. Herbertson. 

 Among the exhibits referred to are the great relief map of the United States, 

 showing the curvature of the globe, and with the glacial ice-cap, two relief 

 globes, the Spruner-Bretschneider charts, illustrating the development of Europe 

 from 350 a.d. to the close of the Napoleonic wars, the series of 37 Charakter- 



