Recent Ornithological Publications. 297 



XXXVI. — Recent Ornithological Publications. 

 1. English Publications. 



We have little to speak of under the head of English books 

 relating to Ornithology since we last addressed our readers. 

 The volume of the Zoological Society's ' Proceedings ' for the 

 past year (1859), with illustrations, has been issued. Nine of the 

 48 plates represent birds. The first part of the ' Proceedings ' 

 for the present year is likewise published, and contains many 

 papers on Ornithology. Mr. Bree's 'Birds of Europe not ob- 

 served in the British Isles ' has reached its twenty-fourth mim- 

 ber, the parts appearing with very commendable regularity. 



The fifth number of vol. xxviii. of the ' Journal of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal ' contains an " Itinerary, with Memoranda, 

 chiefly Topographical and Zoological, through the Southerly 

 portion of the District of Amherst, Province of Tenasserim," 

 by Major Tickell. There are several ornithological notices of 

 interest in this paper. On the Atlaran River (Jan. 31st), "a 

 range of perpendicular rocks of mural limestone rise sheer out 

 of the water to six or eight hundred feet, on the right bank of 

 the river, and some extraordinary, bold-scarped, insulated rocks 

 are scattered also along the opposite side. On the pinnacles of 

 these rocks we observed numbers of Adjutants. These large 

 birds breed here annually, and the rocks are in many places 

 conspicuously white with their dung. There are two species 

 of Adjutant, Leptoptilus argala (our old Calcutta friend), and 

 L. javanicus (a rarer visitor in Bengal), and both breed together 

 in these inaccessible places. The Argala is noticeably larger 

 than the other ; but the eggs of the two species are hardly to be 

 distinguished apart.'' An Appendix to this paper contains de- 

 scriptions of some birds supposed to be new, procured during 

 the journey ; but as all the species have been previously named 

 by Mr. Blyth in his * Report ' published in the previous number 

 of the same Journal, it would have been better not to have 

 given Major TickelPs manuscript names, which are merely use- 

 less synonyms. 



