l80 From Magazines, &€. [,.f April 



series of clutches of the eggs of each species, however rare it may be. 

 Many are induced to collect eggs by the same imj^ulse which prompts 

 others to amass old china or bric-a-brac, but with the difference that 

 the harm which they do is irreparable. Their selfish greed and 

 love of acquisition are seriously impoverishing the British fauna. 

 Unfortunately the high prices obtained for well-authenticated 

 clutches at recent sales encourage the unscrupulous collector to 

 pay a high figure in the belief that the value of his eggs will increase 

 with the growing scarcity of the bird which laid them, and that 

 consequently his collection can at any time be disposed of at a 

 profit if brought under the hammer. As illustrating the persecution 

 to which our rarer birds are exposed, it may be mentioned that in 

 a certain district in mid-Wales there are seven pairs of Ravens. 

 They have not been allowed this year to bring off a single young 

 bird. The Buzzards have fared very little better, while, needless 

 to say, the Kites, now reduced to a miserable remnant of three or 

 four pairs, have once more been plundered. The writer would ask 

 others to join him in strongly appealing to all true naturalists to 

 refrain from acquiring British-taken eggs of any species which is 

 within measurable distance of extinction in these islands." 



In The Ibis for October, 1904 (vol. iv., No. 16, p. O72) there 

 appears a note from Mr. A. J. North on the nomenclature of the 

 Blue Wrens of Tasmania and South-Eastern Australia respectively. 

 In 1901 Mr. North discovered that the bird to which Ellis in 1777 

 first gave the name Motacilla cyanca came from Bruni Island, 

 Tasmania (then supposed to be part of Australia). The name 

 Malurus cyaneus would therefore, said Mr. North {vide Proc. Linn. 

 Soc. N.S.W., vol. xxvi., part 2, ]). 632) have to stand for the Tas- 

 manian species, and that of Malnriis superbus (Shaw) for its ally 

 of the mainland. From the note under review it appears that 

 Mr. North has now had access to further authorities, with the 

 result that he finds that Shaw's bird, called by him superbus, came 

 from Tasmania too. It would seem, therefore, that in the early days 

 of Australian ornithology the Blue Wren of South- East Australia 

 had no name at all, and that it has been simply masquerading in 

 borrowed noms-de-plume ever since. Mr. North thinks it is not too 

 late to rectify the omission, and accordingly ])roposes the sjjecific 

 name australis for the continental bird, leaving cyaneus for the 

 island form. Now, the first and chief objection to this is that the 

 Blue Wren of South- East Australia has been from the days of 

 Gould onwards catalogued by the British Museum and known to 

 collectors generally as Malurus cyaneus. Has not Gould's beautiful 

 plate in his immortal " Birds of Australia," portraying life-size 

 figures true to colour, stood for more than half a century over 

 the title " Malurus cyaneus " ? This long usage has given the 

 name a prescriptive right to retention which overrides all purely 

 historical considerations. To change it now would only be to 

 produce that confusion which it should be the very object of 



