ON THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE OF ORNITHOLOGY. 185 



southern position of these islands and their proximity to the African con- 

 tinent would have led us to expect. The ' Histoire Naturelle des Isles 

 Canariennes,' a splendid work lately published at Paris by MM. Webb and 

 Berthelot, contains a list of birds, the whole of which, with the exception of 

 a very few terrestrial species peculiar to the islands, are included in the orni- 

 thology of Europe. 



Asia Minor. — The ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society' contain lists of 

 the birds of Trebizond and Erzroum, by Messrs. Abbot, Dickson, and Ross, 

 and of those of Smyrna by myself. There is also a short list of those obtained 

 by Mr. C. Fellows in the ' Annals of Nat. Hist.' vol. iv. The greater part 

 of the birds hitherto found in this country are also common to Europe, which 

 may in part be attributed to their having been chiefly collected in the northern 

 districts, or in my own case at Smyrna, during the winter season. An orni- 

 thologist who would visit the regions south of the Taurus during the spring, 

 would doubtless meet with many interesting species, a foretaste of which we 

 have in the beautiful Halcyon smyrnensis, discovered more than a century 

 ago by the learned Sherard, and restored to science in 1842 by Mr. E. Forbes*. 



I may here allude to the 'Catalogue of the Birds of the Caucasus' by M. 

 Menetries, in the ' Memoires de I'Acad. Imp. des Sciences de St. Petersbourg.' 

 Although several of the supposed new species have been reduced to the rank 

 of synonyms, yet this list supplies some valuable information on the geogra- 

 phical distribution of species. For the ornithology of Southern Russia, the 

 student may also consult M. Eichwald's summary of the Caucasian and Cas- 

 pian birds in the ' Nouveaux Memoires de la Soc. Imp. des Naturalistes de 

 Moscou,' 1842, and Demidoff's ' Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale,' the 

 zoology of which is edited by Professor Nordmann. 



Siberia — The zoology of Northern Asia was long retarded by the delays 

 which attended the publication of the ' Zoographia Rosso- Asiatica' of that 

 Humboldt of the 18th century, the celebrated Pallas. This posthumous 

 work, though printed in 1811, was not published till 1831, when it at once 

 added to our knowledge a large number of new species. Many commentaries 

 upon Pallas's work, and a,dditions to his species, have been made by various 

 authors, especially by M. Brandt, the learned and indefatigable curator of the 

 Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg, in the ' Bulletin' of the Academy of that 

 city, and by Nordmann in Erman's ' Reise um die Erde.' There are also 

 some valuable 'Addenda' to the work of Pallas from the pen of Dr. Evers- 

 mann, in the ' Annals' of the distant University of Casan, and further addi- 

 tions have been recently contributed by that author to the Petersburg Aca- 

 demy. We may hope that the labours of these and other equally active 

 Russian zoologists will soon make us fully acquainted with the natural history 

 of Asiatic Russia. 



A few of the birds of Behring's Straits are elaborately described, though 

 indifferently figured, in Eschscholtz's ' Zoologischer Atlas,' to Kotzebue's se- 

 cond Voyage, Berlin, 1829. 



Japan. — Drs. Von Siebold and Burger, who were attached for several 

 years to the Dutch mission in Japan, devoted their leisure to the zoology of 

 that little-known country, and the results have now been published by the 

 Dutch government in a handsome work, entitled ' Fauna Japonica.' A 

 remarkable fact established by their researches, is the great amount of coin- 

 cidence between the ornithological faunae of Japan and of Europe. In Tem- 

 minck's ' Manuel d'Ornithologie,' (Introd. to part 3.), is a list of the species 

 common to these two regions, amounting to no less than 114. 



* See Annals of Nat. Hist. vol. ix. p. 441. 



