ee Recent Literature. 301 
1837 John Gould published a paper on the Ground Finches collected there 
_ by Darwin on his famous voyage; in 1870 Sclater and Salvin published 
a paper on Dr. Habel’s collection of Galapagos birds, followed in 1876 by 
Salvin’s special memoir ‘On the Avifauna of the Galapagos Archipelago’ ; 
in 1871 Mr. Ridgway published the final results of his work on the Baur 
and Adams collection; and we have in the present memoir a report on 
the Webster-Harris collection, made in 1897. 
The Webster-Harris expedition was suggested to Mr. Frank B. Webster 
of Hyde Park, Mass., by Mr. Rothschild ‘‘ towards the end of 1896,” and 
the expedition set out in March, 1897, ‘‘under the command of Mr. 
Charles Miller Harris as chief naturalist and Mr. S. A. Robinson as sail- 
ing master, Messrs. James Cornell, O. E. Bullock, and George Nelson as 
collectors.” The party went to Colon with the intention of there chart- 
ering a suitable vessel for the cruise. While there Robinson, Cornell, 
and Bullock “contracted yellow fever and died, partly at Colon, and 
partly on their voyage ” to San Francisco, where Nelson gave up the trip 
and returned home. Here Mr. Harris, after some delay, chartered the 
two-masted schooner ‘ Lila and Mattie,’ and secured Messrs. R. H. Beck, 
F. P. Drowne, and C. D. Hull as collectors. The original plan of making 
extensive collections at Guadalupe Island in the Revillagigedo Group, 
and at Cocos Island had to be abandoned, owing to the unfortunate delay 
in starting, only a short stay being made at Clarion Island, on the way to 
the Galapagos. The party left San Francisco June 21, 1897, sighting 
Clarion Island July 2, where a couple of days were spent collecting ; leav- 
ing Clarion Island July 4, the party reached Culpepper Island, Galapagos, 
July 26, where work was carried on continuously till Dec. 28, the islands 
ot practically the whole group being visited, and San Francisco was 
reached, on the return trip, Feb. 8, 1898. 
The diaries of Messrs. Harris and Drowne are printed (pp. 86-135) as 
introductory to the main paper, and contain much interesting information 
respecting the experiences of the party and their work, as well as impor- 
tant information on the character of the islands visited and their natural 
products. Then follows ‘General Remarks about the Fauna of the Gala- 
pagos Islands’ (pp. 136-142). The material available for investigation 
by the authors numbered ‘‘ not less than 3075 skins from the expedition 
under Mr. Harris, and the Baur collection of about 1100 skins,” besides 
access to Gould’s and Salvin’s types in the British Museum. The Baur 
collection, now principally in the Tring Museum, contains also Mr. Ridg- 
way’s types and topotypes of the species described by him from the Baur 
collection. ‘‘This material,” say the authors, ‘‘is perhaps larger than 
any material ever brought together from any area of similarly small 
dimensions. Although we must admit that we are still sadly in want of 
biological observations upon many of the birds, and of all knowledge of 
the nidification and eggs of the land-birds, we can hardly believe that this 
vast material is ‘ still too fragmentary to warrant any serious attempt to 
