•7-?2 Recent Literature. loct 



island. His observations on the flightless Rail {Dryolimnas a/dabra?ius) 

 are particularly interesting. 



Thirteen of the birds collected by Dr. Abbott in these islands have been 

 previously described as new by Mr. Ridgway 1 , and the name Turtur abbotti 

 is here proposed for the Seychelles form of T. picturatas. 



An Appendix gives a useful tabular list, showing the distribution of the 

 212 birds known from the entire Madagascan group of islands, from 

 Mauritius to Comoro, and a. bibliography — F. M. C. 



Robinson's Birds of Margarita. 2 — In 1S76, when the Smithsonian 

 Institution sent Mr. F. W. Ober to make collections of birds in the Lesser 

 Antilles, there were only two of the larger islands of the Caribbean basin, 

 Cuba and Jamaica, of whose avifauna we possessed anything approaching 

 a complete knowledge. It is an indication of the activity shown in orni- 

 thological research during the past twenty years that the island visited by 

 Lieut. Robinson was the only one in the whole West Indian and Carib- 

 bean group which had not been more or less explored by ornithologists. 

 Margarita, like Trinidad, is a continental island and has derived its 

 avifauna from Venezuela, from which it is distant only seventeen miles. 

 It is forty-two miles long and twenty and one-half miles wide in its 

 greatest dimensions. The southern shore in the vicinity of Porlamar, 

 where Lieut. Robinson landed, is "flat or gently rolling" and grown 

 with scrubby thorn trees, cacti, etc. "About three miles inland foothills 

 begin, which rise by leaps to a central peak, 3.240 feet in height," a 

 sufficient height to condense the moisture of the warm trade-winds, 

 giving a rainfall which produces a heavy forest. 



Lieut. Robinson had only sixteen days' collecting on Margarita, but the 

 fact that he began half an hour after landing is good evidence that he 

 made the most of this time. He worked both in the dry coast region and 

 in the mountain forests, securing 200 specimens and recording 73 species. 



Of a number of these interesting biographical notes are given. Thus 

 the calls of Eupsyckortyx pallidas resemble those of our Bob-white, a 

 marked instance of the stability of call-notes and suggesting common 

 ancestry; Bucco bicinctus nests in holes in the dwellings of termites; the 

 Buff-breasted Hummingbird feeds in part on fruit and has a song of 

 decided character, and Myiarchus tyrannulus, like our own Myiarchus, 

 uses a cast-off snake skin for home decoration, evidence of the antiquity 

 of a habit which has doubtless persisted long after its cause has ceased to 



1 Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., XVI, 1893, PP- 4. 597-599 ; XVII, 1894, 371-373; 

 Auk, XI, 1S94, 74. 



2 An Annotated List of Birds Observed on the Island of Margarita, and at 

 Guanta and Laguayra, Venezuela. By Wirt Robinson, First Lieutenant, 

 Fourth U. S- Artillery, with Critical Notes and Description of New Species, 

 bv Charles W. Richmond, Assistant Curator, Department of Birds. Proc. 

 U. S. Nat. Mus., XVIII, 1896, pp. 649-6S5, one map. 



