^°'i9lf ^^] Recent Literature. 409 



TICHODROMA MURARIA. 



85. Tichodroma muraria (L.). — the wall creeper. 



SITTA EUROP^A. 



86. Sitta europsea britannica Hart. — the British nuthatch. 



PARUS MAJOR. 



87. Parus major major L. — the continental great titmouse. 



88. Parus major newtoni Prazak. — the British great titmouse. 



Under each numbered form is given the original reference and type 

 locality, the latter restricted when necessary; and references to the last 

 edition of Yarrell's 'History of British Birds', and Saunder's 'Manual'. 

 Then come three paragraphs on distribution: (1) Distribution in England 

 and Wales, in Scotland and in Ireland; (2) Migrations in the British Isles; 

 (3) Distribution Abroad; — all of them very full. As seen in Nos. 83 and 

 86 above, original spelling is strictly adhered to. Occurrences that are not 

 fully authenticated or are perhaps escaped cage birds are given in brack- 

 ets in their proper place in the list and are unnumbered, but " vagrants " of 

 apparently natural occurrence take their regular position and number. 

 Important changes in nomenclature from the later British lists are ex- 

 plained in footnotes. 



The only important omission to our mind is that of the generic heading, 

 as without it we cannot always determine the source from which the generic 

 name is taken or which species is regarded as the type. 



The Hst comprises 469 forms — species or subspecies — and as we run 

 over the names we are struck with the remarkable accordance with the 

 A. O. U. List. Not only are the Jaegers named as Americans have for 

 twenty-five years maintained that they should be named, but Colymhus 

 actually appears for the Grebes and Gavia for the Loons ! There are about 

 190 cases where the same bird occurs in both hsts or where the American 

 and British forms differ only subspecifically, and of these 121 have exactly 

 the same binomial name in the two works, while in 63 others the specific 

 name is the same but the generic names differ owing to tlie tendency of the 

 British authors to ' lump ' genera. Twenty-four additional genera occur 

 which have different species on the two sides of the Atlantic, and for all 

 of them the same names are employed in the two lists. 



The ' lumping ' of genera is particularly noticeable in the ducks and 

 shore-birds. In the former, Chaulelasmus, Nettion, Querquedula, and 

 Mareca are included in Anas, while Netta, Marila, Clangula and Charito- 

 netta of the A. O. U. List are united under Nyroca. The reduction of 

 Acanthis, Spinus, Astragalinus, and Carduelis to one genus is also rather 

 startling. These cases, as well as six instances where American birds are 

 treated as subspecies of Old World species, are matters of individual 

 opinion and cannot be covered by any Code. On purely nomenclatural 

 questions the two lists are in remarkable accord, there being only thirteen 

 cases of difference in generic and five in specific names. 



In the substitution of Oenanthe for Saxicola; Hydrobates for Thalasso- 

 droma, Tyto for Aluco; Canutus for Tringa, Tringa for Helodromas and 



