40 Reviews. [isf July 



voyage of H.M.S. Penguin, were presented by the Admiralty ; 

 and in 1893 Mr. F. A. Philbrick, Q.C., donated a collection 

 made by his son, principally in Gippsland. Mr. Donald 

 Mackintosh, of Victoria (who, although not strictly an orni- 

 thologist, is nevertheless a famous " bird collector "), on the 

 occasion of his pigeon-shooting trip to the Old World in 

 1900, gave a small collection of the eggs of his native 

 country. By no means the least valuable were the rare 

 specimens presented the same year by our fellow-member of 

 the Aust. O.U., the well-known Queensland collector, Mr. 

 C. A. Barnard, while Mr. E. S. Moulden, of Adelaide, is also 

 credited with interesting specimens. 



Individualizing more critically some of the Australian species, 

 there are several points worth drawing attention to. It will be 

 noticed that under " Emu " (p. 5), two eggs are recorded as 

 presentations (respectively by Sir T. Davenport and Dr. 

 Milligen) from Tasmania. If they were really collected on that 

 island before the extirpation of the species there they are 

 indeed notable relics, besides possessing a value in that the 

 species was possibly distinct from the mainland bird, as the 

 Kangaroo Island species was. 



Mr. Oates has kept the Australian Swamp-Quails under the 

 one species, Syncecus australis. But in describing the eggs he 

 states that the specimen from Tasmania is " fully twice the size 

 of any other egg of this species in the collection." Surely, if 

 oology counts for anything, this is expert evidence that there is 

 a larger-sized Swamp-Quail in Tasmania (and adjacent parts), 

 which field ornithologists have always held to be distinct from 

 the common kind. 



It appears that the &g^ of the Chestnut-backed (Bustard) 

 Quail {Turnix castanonota) was figured half a century ago in 

 Fortpflanz ges. Vog., tab. xii. (Thienemann), although some 

 writers have stated it to be " undescribed."* It is strange that 

 Gould did not describe these eggs, seeing there were seven in 

 his collection, with data " Port Essington, N. Australia," probably 

 collected by Gilbert. It is a pity it did not occur to Mr. Oates 

 to figure one of these specimens, which, he says, " are quite 

 different from those of all the other species of this group," 

 instead of that of the familiar Tnrnix velox, more particularly as 

 the figures are, with few exceptions, those of eggs not previously 

 delineated. The previous figure, being buried in an old German 

 publication, is not available to the majority of readers, and was 

 virtually unknown. 



Mr. Oates will certainly popularise the " Catalogue of Birds' 

 Eggs " by the free use of vernacular names of birds in his de- 



* A footnote in "Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds," Campbell (1900), gives a 

 provisional description. This has been fully established as correct by the description 

 of eggs' from the same locality in the work under review. 



