1899] THE NOTES OF BIRDS 149 
alarm-cries of bird-colonies. In the present case, an English ornithologist 
furnishes an interesting collection of his own rendering of bird-notes. Probably 
no two persons would express the more difficult notes in exactly the same way, 
but an approximation to truth is by no means impossible. Mr. Witchell has 
devoted so much loving labour to the study of his favourite subject, that many 
people besides professed naturalists will welcome the present volume, and find 
that it stimulates their endeavours to acquaint themselves with all the different 
notes that enliven our shores and forest haunts. The treatise is popularly 
written, and the songs of a good many birds are expressed in musical notation. 
H. A. MAcCPHERSON. 
The latest number of the Zvransactions of the British Mycological Society 
contains a summary of the Fungus Foray held at Dublin in September 1898, 
and the papers read at the meetings. The Foray must have been conducted 
with energy, for 160 species were added to an already existing list of 830 species 
for the counties of Dublin and Wicklow. In the report useful references to 
suitable neighbourhoods and to the local literature will be found. Among the 
more important papers are those by Dr. C. B. Plowright, who acted as president 
of the meeting. His address on the Agaricini, and a contribution on ‘‘ New and 
rare British fungi,” are useful and practical. A summary of the recent work of 
Eriksson, of Stockholm, on the Uredineae of cereal crops is particularly valuable, 
because, during the past year, that author has given articles on the same subject 
to almost every existing botanical magazine, till he has landed the student in a 
hopeless maze of references ; a clear summary like this one was much needed. 
The Dublin members, Mr. Greenwood Pim and Dr. M‘Weeney, have contributed 
useful papers, the latter throwing light on two sclerotium diseases of the potato. 
Two papers in the number before us are merely reprints of the British Associa- 
tion reports of the 1898 meeting ; they are both rudimentary notes on laboratory 
work done at Cambridge, and it seems absurd that such should be presented in 
the same month to the British Association and again to the Mycological Society ; 
still more superfluous that one should meet them here for at least the fourth 
time in the literature of botany. Dr. Plowright gives obituary notices on two 
eminent fungologists—Rev. Canon Du Port and Mr. H. T. Soppitt, with good 
portraits. 
We have received the first number of the Polyclinic, being the journal of the 
Medical Graduates’ College, London, a journal which does not at first sight much 
concern readers of Vatwral Science, however strongly they may in other capacities 
sympathise with the aims of this admirable institution. Yet as we turn over 
the pages with a biological eye, we feel impressed by the fact that while know- 
ledge is manifold there is only one science. Sir William Broadbent, with the 
progress of science for his keynote, Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, with the motto, 
“Tis the taught already that profits by teaching,” Dr. Miller Ord, with the 
proverb “ Docendo discimus,” expound the aims of the college ; and as we pass 
to courses of lectures we see “ functions of the nervous system,” “ family history 
in nervous disease,” “diseases of animals,” “experimental teratogeny,” “ dis- 
solution of heredity,” “physiology of germinal life,” and much more, which 
shows that the journal has much common ground with ours. Floreat. 
The June number of the Journal of School Geography contains, inter alia, 
articles on Southern California, by Mr. J. F. Chamberlain ; on the geographical 
and geological exhibition at Springfield, Mass., by Professor R. E. Dodge ; on 
pressure, winds, and rainfall over the British Islands by Dr. A. J. Herbertson. 
Among the exhibits referred to are the great relief map of the United States, 
showing the curvature of the globe, and with the glacial ice-cap, two relief 
globes, the Spruner-Bretschneider charts, illustrating the development of Europe 
from 350 a.D. to the close of the Napoleonic wars, the series of 37 Charakter- 
