160 Recently published Ornithological Works. 



on tlie Directive Coloration of Birds, with a plate showing 

 that the colours of the upper parts are Protective, while those 

 oE the underparts — which are exposed in flight — are 

 Directive. The species figured are all northern Hawks 

 and Owls; a good deal of importance being attached to the 

 presence — or absence — of the '' wrist-spot " on the underside 

 of the expanded wing. 



3. Buller on the Ornithology of New Zealand. 



[Notes on the Ornithology of New Zealand. By Sir Walter L. Buller, 

 D.Sc, K.C.M.G., F.R.S. Trans. New Zeal. Inst. xxix. p. 179, 1806.] 



Sir Walter Buller's most recent notes on the birds of New 

 Zealand (read before the Wellington Philosophical Society on 

 the 17th of February 1896) contain a quantity of new inform- 

 ation which will be available for his promised handbook on 

 the birds of that country. They ai^e prefaced with an account 

 of the successful reception accorded by many eminent natu- 

 ralists to his ' Illustrations of Darwinism ' [cf. Ibis, 1895, 

 p. 390), which Mr. Wallace, Sir Joseph Hooker, Professor 

 Parker, and other well-known sclents unite in praising. 



Although several more species of New Zealand birds are 

 recorded as now probably extinct, we are glad to see that 

 such rarities as Xenicus longipes and Thinornis novce-zealandia 

 are still occasionally met with. Phalacrocorax stictocephalus 

 of Australia is now authentically registered for the first time 

 as an occasional visitor to New Zealand. Sir Walter gives 

 an interesting account of a visit to a breeding-place of the 

 Gannet of the Southern Seas {Dysporus serrator), at Cape 

 Kidnappers. The colony, on a small plateau about 200 

 feet above the sea, was occupied by over a thousand nests 

 of this species, so crowded together that '' it was difficult 

 to step between them.'^ A specimen of the rare Penguin 

 Eudyptes vittatus of Finsch was obtained on Stewart Island. 

 A pair of the little-known large Apteryx lawryi Both- 

 schild was met with in the same island, and the e^g was 

 also procured; it measures 5'4 inches by 3"2o, and is 

 *' perfectly elliptical.^^ 



