116 Recently published Ornithological Works. 



Newton did not count upon being interpreted by one gifted 

 with the poAver of divining intentions possessed by Mr. Smart, 

 who remarks, on the Rustic Bunting in ' Yarrell^s British 

 Birds/ that " the article conchides Avith a very significant 

 vignette of a young person playing with a bird which has 

 been let out of a cage^': the italics again being the author's. 

 Respecting the [wrongly] recorded Demoiselle Crane in 

 Soraersetshire, Saunders is made to say "^ that it had pro- 

 bably escaped from confinement ; " but there is not one 

 syllable of the kind in '^YarrelP (vol. iii. p. 192), and Mr. 

 Smart's statement is a pure fabrication. Again (p. 68) it 

 is asserted that Saunders says " the eggs [of the Noddy 

 Tern] are more calcareous than, and indistinguishable \sic'] 

 from eggs of the Sooty Tern ; " but reference to ' Yarrell,^ 

 vol. iii. p. 564, shows that the very reverse is the case, the 

 words being '^ the shell [of the egg of the Sooty Tern] is 

 smooth, in which respect it differs strikingly from the egg of 

 the Noddy, in which the shell is of a rough calcareous 

 nature.^' As regards the American Laughing Gull, Mr. 

 Seebohm does not " point out that the specimen stated in the 

 B, O. U. List to be in the British Museum is 'Ridibundus";'' 

 on the contrary, as shown by Saunders, he says that it is a 

 nearly adult specimen of the American L. atricilla — the point 

 being that it is not the identical bird said to have been obtained 

 by Montagu at Winchelsea, and which was merely a Larus 

 ridibundus. More might be said, but we think the above 

 will suffice. 



Children are sometimes encouraged to make collections of 

 foreign postage stamps under the impression that they may 

 thereby acquire a knowledge of geography, and we hope tliat 

 the acquisition of egg-shells may in time exercise a similar 

 beneficial effect upon Mr. Smart. He may possibly learn 

 that " Ungarn " is merely German for a country known in 

 English as Hungary ; that " Ost Finmarken " is East Fin- 

 mark ; and that '' Los Angelos Cala " [sic'] means Los 

 Angeles, California. " Torn Lapland " seems to indicate an 

 aggression by some northern power, but we do not venture 

 upon politics. 



