1920 J Recent Literature. Ail 



1917, which has recently appeared, is a paper on 'The Bird Rookeries 

 of the Tortugas' by Paul Bartsch. Dr. Bartsch is familiar with the 

 islands and gives us an account of their physical features from his personal 

 observations and a series of thirty-eight plates from original photographs 

 of the bird colonies. The Tortugas are by no means unknown ground 

 to the ornithologist for from the time of Audubon's visit in 1832, many 

 bird students have visited them and described their bird life; while it was 

 on these islands, that Dr. J. B. Watson conducted his now famous ex- 

 periments on the homing of wild birds. From all of these writings, Dr. 

 Bartsch has compiled interesting accounts of the various species of birds 

 which inhabit the group, adding personal observations as well, and con- 

 cluding with a table of the species observed or collected by such ornith- 

 ologists as have visited the islands since 1857. The pamphlet makes a 

 handy summary of our knowledge of the bird life of this interesting island 

 group. Dr. Bartsch has also published in diary form some observations 

 on the birds of the Florida Keys and southern Florida in the 'Year Book 

 of the Carnegie Institution' for 1919, pp. 205-210, including notes on 97 

 species. — W. S. 



Bangs and Penard on 'Two New American Hawks.' 1 — In studying 

 the birds of prey in the Lafresnaye collection at the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology the attention of the authors was attracted to the exis- 

 tence of two races of Accipiter superciliosus and the form inhabiting Costa 

 Rica southward to Colombia has been named A. s. exitiosus (p. 45) type 

 from Carrillo, Costa Rica. The difference in the size of the White-tailed 

 Kites from the United States and Middle America as compared with those 

 of South America has also prompted the naming of the former as new, 

 and it appears as Elanus leucurus majusculus (p. 47), type from San Rafael, 

 California. The difference in the average wing length is only 15 mm., 

 however, and the individual specimens overlap by 10 mm. — W. S. 



Kuroda on New Japanese Pheasants. 2 — In this review of the Japanese 

 pheasants of the genus* Phasianus, printed in Japanese, the descriptions 

 of the new forms are also given in English. These are P. versicolor ro- 

 bustipes (p. 299), Sado Island; P. v. kiusiuensis (p. 300), Kiusiu Island; 

 P. v. tanensis (p. 300), Tanegashima Island; P. soemmerringi subrufus 

 (p. 303), warmer districts on the Pacific side of Hondo, type from Oisan, 

 Prov. Suruga; P. s. intermedins (p. 304). Shikoku and southwestern Hondo, 

 type from Yunoyamamura, Prov. Iyo. — W. S. 



1 Two New American Hawks. By Outram Bangs and Thomas Edward Pen- 

 ard. Proc. N. E. Zool. Club, Vol. VII, pp. 45-47. February 19, 1920. 



2 Descriptions of Five New Forms of Japanese Pheasants. By Nagamichi 

 Kuroda. Dobutsugaku Zasshi (Zoological Magazine) Vol. XXXI, 1919, pp. 

 309-312. 



