328 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



name poliocephala. Specimens of both B. magellanica and B. 

 •poliocephala are now living and breeding in the gardens of the 

 Zoological Society. 



P. 385. Sterna meridionalis. — This name has been already 

 used in the same genus for a species closely allied to Sterna 

 anglica by Dr. Brehm, and should therefore be changed. 



P. 391. Inca mystacalis. — The generic term Inca is subse- 

 quent in point of date to Nania, Boie (1844), and Larostema, 

 Blyth, Cat. B. Mus. As. Soc. 1849, p. 293. 



The ' Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia/ of which we have received the first 84 pages 

 belonging to the present year's volume, contain an important 

 paper by j\Ir. Cassin — the first part of a "Catalogue of Birds 

 collected on the rivers Camma and Ojobai, Western Africa, by 

 M. P. B. Duchaillu in 1858, with notes, and descriptions of 

 new species.'' The collection here treated of is " the most ex- 

 tensive and interesting " yet made by this young and enter- 

 prising explorer, and contains many new and fine species — 

 Meropogon breweri, Parmoptila woodhousii, Muscipeta speciosa, 

 and others described by Mr. Cassin. We doubt, however, if 

 the first-named will be found eventually to be a Meropogon^ of 

 which the one known species is a curious type, from Celebes, 

 only known in the Leyden Museum. At any rate, it is a sin- 

 gular genus if really composed of two species, one from Celebes 

 and another from West Africa. We do not quite understand what 

 birds Mr. Cassin means by Halia'etus blagrus, sp. 4, and Spil- 

 ornis bacha, sp. 7 of his list. The latter is an Eastern Asiatic 

 bird, from Java and Borneo ; and we have always been inclined 

 to consider Le Vaillant's story of its occurrence in Africa as 

 purely fictitious. The former has been generally considered to 

 be synonymous with Cuncuma leucogastra, though Mr. J. H. 

 Gurney* rather refers it to the young stage oi llaliactus vucifer. 

 But Circa'ctus melavotis of Verreaux, described in Dr. Hart- 

 laub's System of W. A. Ornithology, is quite another thing from 

 Spilornis bacha (as generally understood). It is a true Circa'etus 

 of small size, and probably, according to Mr. Gurney's ideas, the 

 young of Circa'etus cinerascens of J. Miillert. 



* See anten, p. 239. t v. Miiller, Ois. d'Afiunie. pi. 6. 



