502 Recently published Ornithological Works. 



will not fail to add to his reputation as an excellent observer. 

 His notes arc j ust of the right kind^ and are not overladen by 

 any extraneous matter. For the northern sides of the Straits 

 he depends almost entirely on his own resources^ gathered 

 during his more or less prolonged stay at " the Rock " be- 

 tween 1868 and 1874; but with respect to the southern side, 

 his information, he tells us, is chiefly drawn from a MS. of 

 the late Franyois Favier, the collector, who resided more than 

 thirty years at Tangier, which MS. Col. Irby obtained at an 

 exorbitant price. In both cases he has also availed him- 

 self of the various papers by Lord Lilford, Mr. Saunders, and 

 the late Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake, which have appeared in ' The 

 Ibis.^ We consequently have in this volume about as good 

 an account of the ornithology of the Straits as could at present 

 be composed, though our gallant friend assures us, and no 

 doubt with truth, that '' there is ample room, for any one 

 with energy, to work out a great deal more information " on 

 their birds. 



As most of our readers will doubtless possess themselves of 

 Col. Irby^s book, we need not do more than refer to a few 

 points in it that seem especially to deserve notice in these 

 pages. He condemns as "apocryphal" (p. 61) the story 

 which, originating with Favier, was first published in ' The 

 Ibis^ (1862, p. 27), as to the interbreeding of Asia cupensis 

 and A. acc/pitrinus, remarking that, so far as his observation 

 goes, the latter is only a winter resident in Andalueia, where 

 it is not very abundant, and accordingly its breeding, even 

 when tempted by a tawnier partner, so far south as INIoroceo 

 is not very likely. Oologists have long vaguely talked of the 

 tame Cursorius gallicus which used to lay eggs, to the no small 

 profit of its owner, at Tangier. We are glad to have its his- 

 tory here given (p. 157) in detail: it seems to have laid 

 three dozen of eggs in six years, after which it fell a victim 

 to the war between Spain and Morocco"^. On the whole 



* We may ubserve that these eg'gs, of wliicli we have seen several, do 

 not bear out the statement made bv Mr. Ilcwitsou (Ibis, 18.5J), p. 7i*) that 

 they are "smaller and more I'ainth coloured" than those laid by the 

 wild bird. 



