i893. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 85 



sometimes rather malignant, of the labours of such great men as 

 Agardh and Harvey proceeds mostly from Germany, where the com- 

 plaint is made that they were not minute histologists, and did not 

 proceed on the lines laid down in the most recent book on the 

 Mikrotechnik of Botany. Their only productive systematists in this 

 i)ranch of science, Kiitzing and Rabenhorst, conspicuously failed to 

 reach the standard of Agardh and Harvey in this respect, and the 

 young German school has yet to show that improved instruments 

 will profit them to the extent of producing a single systematist of the 

 first rank — one whom they can place alongside of Thuret and Bornet 

 in France. The first great phycological systematist " made in 

 Germany " will obtain a hearty welcome. 



Mr. Bracebridge Wilson, of the Church of England Grammar 

 School at Geelong, Victoria, who has collected many of the new forms 

 •described by Agardh, has printed a very useful list of his collection 

 ■of Algae. He rivals Mr. George Clifton and other correspondents 

 ■of Harvey in the palmy days of collecting Australian Algse, when new 

 forms needed less looking for than in these later times. 



The Pliocene Birds of Oregon. 



In a recent issue of the Journal of the Academy of Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia (ser. 2, vol. ix., pp. 389-425, pis. xv.-xvii.). Dr. R. W. 

 -Shufeldt contributes an interesting memoir on the fossil bird-remains 

 from the later Pliocene deposits of the Silver Lake district, Oregon. 

 The bird-bones obtained from these deposits are generally more or less 

 .nearly perfect, and are in almost all cases sufficiently well preserved 

 to fully justify the author in the determinations he has made. The 

 majority of the forms belong to existing genera and species, and 

 the bird-life of the Oregon lakes in Pliocene times must accordingly 

 have been very similar to that of the present day. Then, as 

 .now, great flocks of swans, geese, and ducks frequented the lakes 

 at certain seasons of the year ; while cormorants and pelicans lined 

 .the shores, and gulls and terns hovered in the air. Grebes also 

 frequented the sedges, and sandpipers and phaleropes coursed along 

 the marge of the waters. Still, however, in spite of this general 

 similarity in the avifauna of the past and present, there were certain 

 .types in the former epoch which would be missed now. For instance, 

 there was a ponderous goose, and likewise a swan, both of which are 

 now extinct. More remarkable, however, was the presence of a 

 gigantic cormorant, of even larger size than the recently extinct 

 Pallas's cormorant of Behring Island ; and scarcely less so was that of 

 .a flamingo, of which numerous characteristic bones are figured. 

 Herons were represented by an extinct species of the type genus ; 

 .and a similar remark will apply to the group of eagles. More note- 

 worthy, however, is the presence of a grouse believed to belong to an 

 extinct genus ; although it must be confessed that it would have 



