Recent Ornithological Publications. 471 



not so much matter^ perhaps, if the characters given were suffi- 

 cient for the recognition of the species. With regard to the 

 supposed new Brazilian Sylvia, every naturalist who has paid the 

 least attention to South American ornithology must be aware that 

 no bird of this form occurs in the New World at all, the repre- 

 sentative group of Mniotiltiruz being readily distinguishable from 

 Sylvia and its allies by the want of the first spurious primary. 

 Signor Benvenuti would have done better to have followed the 

 good advice given to him by M. Auguste Salle, and to have 

 taken steps to have his birds compared with specimens in the 

 French and English collections before describing them as new 

 on his own authority. 



The fourth volume of the Acts of the Italian Society of Na- 

 tural Sciences* contains several ornithological papers. Signor 

 P. Lanfossi writes of Muscicapa albicollis and its allies, M. luctu- 

 osa and M. speculigeraf, which he proposes to reunite as varieties 

 of the same species. The same author also treats subsequently 

 (p. 103) of the Sylvians of the genera Calamoherpe and Hip- 

 pola'is. 



Signor E. Giglioli, who is now working as a student of 

 zoology in London, contributes to the same journal an article 

 on the geographical distribution of birds, principally translated 

 from the Memoir on that subject published in the ' Journal of 

 the Proceedings of the Linnean Society ' for 1857. 



5. American Publications. 



Mr. Coues's " Review of the Terns of North America," pub- 

 lished in last year's volume of the ' Proceedings of the Phila- 

 delphian Academy,' has been for some time in our hands, and 

 would have been noticed before this, had space permitted it. The 

 principal aim of the paper is to give the results of a " careful 

 comparison of the more or less intimately related " North Ame- 

 rican and European species of this group, which the command 

 of a very extensive series of specimens from both continents has 

 enabled him to do. At the same time Mr. Coues has discussed 



* Atti della Societa Italiana di Scienze Natural!. Milano, 1863, vol. iv. 

 t Intorno ad alcune sorte di Pigliamosche o Muscicape, p. 71. 



