240 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



Sclater has been kind enough to show us, we learn that the 

 author, Mr. WilHam Grant, intends to publish a more extensive 

 work on the Ornithology of Malta. Though the readers of this 

 journal have derived from Mr. Wright^s instructive papers pub- 

 lished in its pages (Ibis, 1864, pp.42, 137, and 291, and 1865, 

 p. 459) much information on the subject, we are sure they will be 

 glad to learn more. The present work, however, contains only a 

 list of names, with marks to indicate the comparative abundance 

 or rarity of the 308 species enumerated, if we except the prefatory 

 note above mentioned, in which brief refei'ence is made to the irre- 

 gularity of birds' visits to the island. In certain years, species 

 which are in general very rarely found there arrive abundantly. 

 For example, last year (1866) Regulus ignicapillus and Cursorius 

 gallicus passed in great numbers. Actiturus barti^amius seems 

 to be one of the most recently recorded stragglers. 



2. Fkench. 

 The ' Ornithologie Europeenne,' published in 1849 by the 

 late Dr. Degland, provoked, as most of our readers know, from 

 the pen of Prince C. L. Bonaparte one of the sharpest critical re- 

 views to be found in ornithological literature. Nor was the 

 censure, as it seems to us, wholly undeserved. The author had 

 worked, as his critic remarked of him, "without a collection 

 and without a library,'' two absolutely necessary requirements 

 for the due treatment of the subject ; and the results were as 

 might have been expected. Still the Prince's review was of 

 the kind commonly known as " savage," and actuated by a 

 spirit which it is now the fashion to term "Philistinism," 

 whatever that may mean. He says that in countries where the 

 labours of the great German ornithologists, " ces astres lumi- 

 neux de notre science," are unknown the poor Doctor might 

 pass for a comet, " destinee a popalariser I'Oi'nithologie et a en 

 marquer I'etat a la moitie de ce siecle du progres ;" but little 

 consolation was to be gathered from that or from a few other 

 equally equivocal compliments. It is not surprising, therefore, 

 that the author thus mercilessly handled should have prepared 

 to vindicate himself. At first he intended (as we now learn) to 

 publish a supplementai-y volume, in which he would have replied 



