418 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



The same part of the ' Proceedings ' of the Academy of Phila- 

 delphia also contains a most valuable paper by Mr. Cassin — 

 "A Study of the IcteridcB" — which is in the author^s best man- 

 ner, and full of information. At least three new species are 

 described — Dolichonyx fuscipennis from North-eastern Brazil, 

 Molothrus cabanisi, probably the Lampropsar dives of Cabanis 

 (Mus. Hein. i. p. 194, note) but not of Bonaparte, and M. ru- 

 foaxillaris from Buenos Ayres. 



Our kind supporter, Mr. G. N. Lawrence, has published a 

 " Catalogue of Birds observed on New York, Long and Staten 

 Islands, and the adjacent parts of New Jersey " (Ann. Lye. N. H. 

 New York, vol. viii., April 1866), which contains very many 

 observations of interest. Among them we may notice particularly 

 the successful introduction of the European House-Sparrow 

 [Passer domesticus) into the streets of New York, principally 

 through the intervention of Mr. Eugene Schieffelin. " In 1860, 

 and for three years thereafter, he yearly set free five or six pairs, 

 mostly in the neighbourhood of Madison Square ; seven pairs 

 were let out in the Central Park, by the Commissioners, in 

 1864.^' The extreme cold of last January, says Mr. Lawrence, 

 when the thermometer marked ten degrees below zero, did them 

 no harm ; and at the time he wrote, April 15, " several nests are 

 built in the ivy on the church at the corner of Twenty-ninth 

 Street.'' We need scarcely say that in this, as in all other cases, 

 colonists from our shores have our hearty good wishes for their 

 own prosperity and that of their descendants. Another fact, 

 noticed by Mr. Lawrence, which we may mention, is the sup- 

 posed occurrence, for the second time on record in America*, of 

 the European Woodcock [Scolopax rusticola), bought in a market 

 in December 1859, and believed to have been killed near Shrews- 

 bury, New Jersey. Doubtless as ornithological observers in- 

 crease in number on the other side of the Atlantic, many other 

 cases of the exchange of international courtesies on the part of 

 our birds will come to light : hitherto we have been by far the 



* The first recorded instance in Newfoundland (January 9, 1862) was, 

 we believe, that mentioned in the ' Ibis ' for 1H62 (p. 284). 



