Recent Literature. 53 



British Museum, to Mr. John Gould, and to the late Mr. G. R. Gray. The 

 latter dedicated to him the Colyrnbus adamsi. Unfortunately this youth- 

 ful explorer and already accomplished ornithologist died in 1856 at Sierra 

 Leone, at the early age of thirty-two. His papers have recently been placed 

 by his family in the hands of Mr. II. Stevenson, and have been published 

 in the " Ibis " for October of this year.* Much that he observed has been 

 anticipated by the notes of Messrs. Dall and Bannister. Yet there are 

 several of his observations at once new and interesting. The most 

 noticeable of these is his procuring on the 5th of June, near the redoubt, 

 a specimen of the Blue-throated Warbler (Cyunecula suecica Linn.). 

 There were seven in the flock. This is the only instance of the procuring 

 of this well-known Palaearctic species in North America. 



So too Motacilla flava, the Yellow Wagtail, another well-known Pala?- 

 arctic bird, was found by him quite common at Michalaski. He first met 

 with them on the 5th of June, and found their nests on the 12th. Mr. 

 Bannister has since found these birds breeding in the neighboring island 

 of St. Michael's. 



The Short-eared Owls came there in the middle of May, and were quite 

 common. Mr. Adams's notes on the Snow Goose, Gambel's Goose, the 

 White-fronted Goose, Painted Goose (Cltlcephag i canar/ict), the Black 

 Brant, Hutchins's Goose, the American Scoter, the Blue-eyed Duck (Lam- 

 pronetta fischeri), the Black-throated Eider, Pacific Eider (S. vnigrum), 

 etc., arc full of new and valuable information. So too are his observa- 

 tions concerning the American Dunlin, the Least Sandpiper, the Hudson- 

 ian Godwit, Sabine's Gull, and the Colyrnbus adamsi, believed by inany 

 to be a valid species and not a mere form of the Northern Diver. 



These early observations of Alaskan species, which, had they appeared 

 at the time they were m ide, would have anticipated so much of what has 

 only recently appeared, have both a melancholy and their own intrinsic 

 interest, and are well worthy of attention. — T. M. B. 



Wilson and Bonaparte's American Ornithology. — A new 

 and handsome octavo reprint of Wilson and Bonaparte's " Ornithology *' 

 has been issued by Porter and Coates of Philadelphia.! It claims to be 

 an exact reproduction, minus the atlas of colored plates, of the S 100, 

 three-volume edition issued by the same firm some years ago. At the 

 beginning of the present book are bound in a large number of illustrations 

 of birds, reduced from the original plates of Wilson and Bonaparte. They 

 are not bad cuts, for the most part, but are of very little importance or 



* Ibis, 4th Ser. Vol. II, pp. 420- 442, October, 1878. 



t American Ornithology ; or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United 

 States. Illustrated with plates engraved from drawings from Nature. By 

 Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucian Bonaparte. Popular edition. Philadel- 

 phia : Porter and Coates. Three volumes in one. 



