364 Recent Literature. [july 



date, but he offers no adequate alternative reason. One point that he 

 does emphasize however deserves careful consideration, i. e. that in judging 

 whether the young or adult birds migrate first we are often basing our 

 conclusions upon cases of arrested migration — young birds which have 

 dropped out of the flight exhausted, and not upon the migratory flight 

 itself. In the case of land birds however, the entire flight has to pause 

 somewhere and we should at our stations of observation have just as good 

 an opportunity of seeing one part of it as another. 



These are big problems however, and are only incidentally connected 

 with the main subject of Mr. Loomis's report which will take its place as 

 one of the notable contributions to the natural history of a group of birds 

 as baffling as they are fascinating. The key to their ultimate systematic 

 arrangement will be found in the acquisition of adequate series of breeding 

 birds from all of the scattered islets to which they resort to rear their 

 young. Until we in a measure secure such material a reasonable conser- 

 vatism in the description of new forms is perhaps the wisest course to 

 pursue. 



The half-tone plates, beside the portraits already referred to, consist of 

 photographs of Albatrosses on the Galapagos Islands and of numerous 

 skins illustrating variations in coloration of adults and young. There is a 

 detailed map of the Galapagos Group and another of the oceans of the 

 world. 



A previous publication, No. VIII of this series, by Mr. E. W. Gifford, 

 issued August 11, 1913, covered the other families of water birds and the 

 doves obtained by the expedition. As we understand that Mr. Gifford is 

 now engaged in other lines of work we fear that he may not contemplate 

 completing his report on the remaining families contained in the collection. 

 If not it is sincerely to be hoped that the authorities of the California 

 Academy will arrange for their study by some one of the California orni- 

 thologists as material of such value to ornithology should be reported upon 

 without further delay. — W. S. 



Murphy on Atlantic Oceanites. 1 — This is the second contribution 

 by the same author from the Brewster-Sanford collection of sea birds in 

 The American Museum of Natural History. Mr. Murphy's conclusions 

 are based on a study of more than two hundred skins of the Wilson's 

 Petrel in the collections in the American Museum (including those of Dr. 

 Jonathan Dwight and Dr. L. C. Sanford), the Brooklyn Museum, and the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology. This wealth of material makes his 

 conclusions correspondingly convincing. In the section on plumages 

 and molts, it is shown that the juvenal plumage is recognizably different 

 from that of the adult, and that the molt and growth of wing quills in the 

 adult causes a seasonal variation in the wing measurement quite sufficient 



1 A Study of the Atlantic Oceanites. By Robert Cushman Murphy. Bull. Amer. Mus. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 117-146, pll. I-III, March 26, 1918. 



