Recently published Ornithological Works. 319 



Prof. Newton's excellent essay on ornithology will be read 

 with pleasure and interest by every one who is attached to 

 the fascinating study of birds. In the first part of the 

 memoir is a most instructive account of the principal writers 

 on ornithology, beginning with Pliny, and carried down to a 

 recent, though, perhaps, not quite to the most recent, period. 

 After works on general ornithology, those on faunas and the 

 principal illustrated publications on birds are also shortly 

 reviewed. But the latter half of the article, which contains 

 an historical account of the progress made since the beginning 

 of the present century towards a correct classification of the 

 class Aves, will be that which will, perhaps, attract greatest 

 attention. Prof. Newton rightly considers Blasius Merrem 

 as the " virtual starting-point of the latest efl"orts in syste- 

 matic ornithology," and traces the different ameliorations 

 subsequently made down to the ^' systems " proposed by 

 Sclater in this Journal for 1880. Much to our regret, Prof. 

 Newton declines to propound his own arrangement of birds 

 further than by showing that their primary division into 

 Saururse, Ratitaj, and Carinatae can be regarded as thoroughly 

 substantiated. But taking Sclater's arrangement of the 

 Carinatse for his text, he proceeds to make numerous criti- 

 cisms thereupon, of the force of many of which the author 

 of that arrangement is fully convinced. It is a misfortune, 

 we venture to think, that these criticisms are so much more 

 of a destructive than a constructive character, though we are 

 glad to see that Prof. Newton has pronounced definitely on 

 one or two controverted points, such as the alliance of 

 Cariama to the Accipitres and the independence of the Striges 

 from the Accipitres. 



97. Pagenstecher's 'Birds of South Georgia.' 



[Die Vogel Siid-Georg-iens nach der Ausbeute der deutschen Polar- 

 station in 1882 uud 1883. Von Prof. Dr. Pagenstecher. [Jalirb. d. 

 wissenschaftl. Anst. zu Hamburg, II.) Hamburg : 1885.] 



The German expedition to the remote South-Atlantic 

 island of South Georgia was quartered at Royal Bay in that 

 island from the 21st of August, 1882, to the 5th of Sep- 



