Recently published Ornithological Works. 495 



are so bad as they are painted. There are even now examples 

 of Conurus carolinensis to be seen alive in the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens, and, from what we read in ' The Auk/ it 

 would appear that Psendognjphus californianus is still not so 

 very rare in certain remote districts of the Far West. 



The still more melancholy list of birds actually extinct, and 

 not by any possibility to be revived, is a longer one. Nine- 

 teen bird-types, many of them of the most remarkable form, 

 have thus passed away for ever, and of some of these {Nestor 

 norfolcensis) not even a single specimen is to be found in 

 our museums, whilst others {Prosobonia leucoptera) are now 

 known only by single specimens. 



113. Harvie-Brown on the Island of Rockall. 



[Rockall. By J. A. Harvie-Brown, F.R.S.E., F.Z.S. Proc. R. Pbys. 

 Soc. Ediub. xiii. p. 63 (1895).] 



It will be remembered that Messrs. Harvie-Brown and 

 T. E. Buckley, in their ' Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer 

 Hebrides,^ gave an account of this remote islet, so far as was 

 then known to them. Since the publication of that work 

 their attention has been drawn by Mr. Miller Christy to a 

 description written in 1821 by Surgeon Alexander Fisher, 

 R.N., in his ' Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic 

 Regions in H.M. Ships ' Heckla' and ' Griper^ in the years 

 1819 and 1820'; and this is now printed, with additional 

 information obtained through Mr. John Cordeaux from the 

 Grimsby smackowners and from other sources. The most 

 definite of the slight particulars respecting the birds found 

 on that rock is, however, from Herr H. C. Miiller, of the 

 Faeroes; from which it appears that Captain Johannes Hansen, 

 of Thorshaven, landed in 1887 and found breeding there 

 Ui'ia bruennichi, Alca torda, Fulmarus glacialis, and Puffinus 

 major. Confirmation as regards the last-named species is 

 desirable, for the evidence is at present very strong that the 

 Great Shearwater does not breed anywhere in the northern 

 hemisphere. (See abstract of Capt. Collinses remarks in 

 Saunders's 'Manual of British Birds,' p. 716.) 



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