aaa NOTES AND COMMENTS. 87 
details of the lives of these molluscs in this district are particularly 
interesting. The report deals in the fullest manner with the natural 
conditions affecting the growth, the nature of the bottom, the food, 
enemies, &c., of the South Carolinan oyster, gives detailed analyses 
of the waters in all districts where the oyster lives, and is illustrated 
and made clearer by the reproductions of photographs. It would be 
well if our own Government were to secure a number of copies of 
these reports, and furnish them to the oyster growers of our coasts. 
Mr. JoHN Corpeaux, in the Naturalist for January, 1893 (Dp. 5), 
continues his records of the migration of birds, as observed on our 
East Coast. From these ‘“‘ Bird-Notes from the Humber District in 
the Autumn of 1892,” we learn that two ‘“ great rushes” of migrants 
occurred on September 20 and 21, and again on October 13 to 16. 
Both these rushes took place under exactly similar conditions, 7.e., 
with easterly gales. The past autumn was also remarkable for 
the unusual number of rare or occasional wanderers which turned 
up in the district. 

‘‘THERE were brave men before Agamemnon,” and there have 
been ornithologists since Gould, but the results of their labours appear 
to be unknown to a writer who discourses of the Ohazal and Shama 
in last month’s English Illustrated Magazine, and displays, in his some- 
what pretentious article, an astounding ignorance of recent work on 
these species and their allies. But what can be expected of one who 
uses the term ‘‘ hybrid” as if it inevitably connoted sterility? Wecan 
only hope that in future his ‘“ ornithological researches” will be 
brought more up to date, in which case he may be mortified by dis- 
covering in his paper ‘little mistakes” quite as serious, if not as 
diverting, as that which, according to him, caused Linneus to name 
the Ohazal Copsychus (or rather Gracula) saulanis. 
In the Fournal of the Anthropological Institute for August and 
November, 1892, Mr. John Allen Brown writes on the ‘ Continuity 
of the Palzolithic and Neolithic Periods.” He divides the ‘“ stone 
age”’ into Eolithic, Palwolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic, mainly 
according to the workmanship of the implements. Workmanship 
alone is, however, scarcely a satisfactory test of date, in the absence 
of distinct geological evidence as to the relative age of the specimens. 
We observe that the whole of the implements figured by Mr. Brown 
were found on the surface. The gap that exists in this country 
between Palzolithic and Neolithic does not yet appear to have been 
satisfactorily bridged. : 
AN interesting contribution to our knowledge of the reproduction 
of the Foraminifera was made by Mr. J. J. Lister at the meeting of 
