^°\^if^-^] Recent Literature. 269 



number of a quarterly journal of Italian ornithology edited by Count 

 Arrigoni Degli Oddi and five others. It is a ' double number' with a colored 

 plate of a hybrid pheasant, Diardigallus diardi X Gennceus, and is a well 

 printed and very creditable publication. 



A paper by T. Salvadori treats of the relationship of Saxicola aurita 

 and S. stapazina. The editor and Dr. G. Damiani describe a collection of 

 birds from the Tuscan Archipelago. The reversion to ancestral characters 

 in a specimen of P^alco vespertinus is described by F. Chigi and other papers 

 are by A. Chigi on the migration of the Common Gull from the Baltic to 

 Italy, by E. Balducci on the capture of Pelecanus crispus in Italy and by 

 G. Martorelli on the hybrid pheasant already mentioned. Numerous 

 short notes and extended reviews complete the number. — W. S. 



'Cassinia.' ' — An epoch in the history of this pubhcation is marked 

 by the resignation from the editorship, of Mr. Witmer Stone, who had so 

 admirably guided the course of the ten preceding volumes of the same name, 

 as well as the four earlier volumes of the Proceedings of the Delaware 

 Valley Ornithological Club. All that Dr. J. A. Allen has been to the Bul- 

 letin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club and * The Auk,' Mr. Stone was to 

 Cassinia and its forerunner. Mr. Robert Thomas Moore, the new editor, 

 fully recognizes the valuable services of his predecessor, and promises to 

 maintain as nearly as possible the high standard set. So far as the present 

 volume is concerned this promise has been amply redeemed. Mr. Moore 

 urges the detailed study of the life-histories of birds, as the best work to 

 which local students of ornithology can now turn their hand. The charac- 

 ter of his paper on the nesting habits of the Least Sandpiper, presented at 

 the Philadelphia meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union, Novem- 

 ber, 1911, proved that he is fully quahfied to lead such a movement. 



The contents of the present volume of Cassinia are the following: Con- 

 stantine S. Rafinesque as an Ornithologist, By Samuel N. Rhoads; The 

 frontier of the Carolinian fauna in the lower Delaware valley. By Spencer 

 Trotter; The Center Furnace swamp. By Richard C. Harlow; Recollec- 

 tions of the Passenger Pigeon, By Herman Behr; The summer of fire and 

 bird adaptation. By Cornelius Weygaudt; Down the Pocomoke, By 

 George Spencer Morris; General notes; Report of the spring migration 

 of 1911, Compiled by Witmer Stone; Abstract of the Proceedings of the 

 Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, 1911; Club notes [Editorial]; 

 Necrology; Bibliography of papers published in 1911, relating to the 

 birds of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware; list of officers and 

 members and index. 



The report on migration shows that the accumulation of records by the 

 Delaware valley club are beginning to tell. Generalizations are now 

 possible, and as Mr. Stone remarks: "by the method of computing 'bulk 

 arrival' we are now getting remarkably accurate results." — W. L. M. 



« Cassinia, A bird annual. Proc. of the Del. Valley Ornithological Club of 

 Philadelphia, No. XV, 1911, 80 pp., .3 pll., Feb. 1912. 



