374 Recently published Ornithological Works. 



The notes on nesting-habits, derived from various sources, 

 are full and interesting, and well brought up to date. 

 Mr. North, however, confines the scope of his work strictly 

 to those species which breed in Australia and Tasmania^ 

 while Mr. Campbell included all species on the Australian 

 list. The plates of nests and nesting birds from photo- 

 graphs (Series A) are excellent, but the heliotype figures of 

 eggs (Series B), which are uncoloured in the copy sent 

 to us, give little more than a rough idea of the size of the 

 egg and character of the markings. Now that the intro- 

 duction of the three-colour process has revolutionized the 

 art of colour-printing and reduced the cost so materially, 

 it seems a pity that these photographic illustrations could 

 not have been replaced by a set of three-colour plates. The 

 text-figures of birds by the late Mr. N. Cayley are somewhat 

 crude and conventional. 



In the article on Rnllina tricolor (p. 206) we notice that 

 Mr. North definitely rejects the supposition that this species 

 lays spotted eggs. It will be remembered that there was 

 some correspondence on the subject in 'The Ibis' for 1912 

 (pp. 198, 552 & 684) in which all the evidence pointed to 

 this conclusion. Mr. E. C. Stuart-Baker informs us that 

 the eggs of all the three species of this genus on the Indian 

 list {R. super ciliar is, R. fasciata, and R. (Castanolimnas) 

 cannincji) are also white. The eggs of R. canningi described 

 in Hume & Gates, ' Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds,^ iii. 

 p. 398, and ' Catalogue of Eggs in the British Museum,' i. 

 p. 115, are erroneously ascribed to this species, as are also 

 the eggs mentioned in the second edition of Nehrkorn's 

 ' Katalog' p. 36, under the heading o^ R. fasciata, and pro- 

 bably also those of R. minahassa. The eggs of R. fasciata 

 are, however, correctly described in the ' Nachtrage,' 1914, 

 p. 47*. 



In the article on the Sooty Tern [Sterna fuliginosa), 

 p. 326, Mr. North shows that in all the Australian breeding 

 places the clutch consists almost invariably of a single egg, 



* This is not tlie only genus of the Rallidae in which the eggs are 

 white, for it is apparently also the case in Corethntra {Sarvf/trura). 



