130 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



we learn from the Report* we have received through that gen- 

 tleman's kindness. His presidency over the Society is by no 

 means an honorary one, two of the most important of the com- 

 munications, besides several others of less account, made to the 

 meeting having been from him. One of these is on the species 

 of the genus Numenius, the author admitting eight as valid — 

 N. longirostris, N. australis, N. arquata, N. tenuirostris, N. 

 minutus, N. borealis, N. hudsonicus, and N. pheeopus. These seem 

 to us to be grouped by him rather artificially, the first four 

 being separated by the colouring of the top of the head, which 

 in them is uniformly spotted, while the rest have two dark un- 

 spotted longitudinal stripes divided by a pale and spotted middle 

 space. We think that the character afforded by the buff 

 colouring of the under wing-coverts, and especially of the axil- 

 lary tuft, which is found in all the American species of the genus, 

 and in them alone, coinciding as it does with the difference of 

 geographical range, would have been a pi-eferable diagnostic. 

 The second of Baron Droste's communications to which we 

 have especially referred is on the representation of bird-life in 

 the most extreme north — the very neighbourhood of the pole. 

 This of course must be a matter chiefly of surmise ; and there- 

 fore opinions may well differ about it. We do not think it at all 

 follows because a species is circumpolar that it is necessarily 

 polar, as the author seems to do. Another good paper in the 

 Report is that by Baron von Konig-Warthausen on the eggs of 

 species of Sterna. 



Dr. Seidlitz's pamphletf, a copy of which we have received, 

 will hardly be appreciated by oologists unless they are far more 

 than mere egg-collectors. It treats of highly interesting subjects, 

 but gets into regions rather more sublime than those where the 

 readers of the * Ibis ' are wont to tread. At any rate the word 

 " Kohlenstofftheorie " carries with it a suggestion of ^chemical 



* Bericlit liber die XVII. Versammlung der Deutsclien Omitbologen- 

 GeseUschaft. Cassel : 1869. 8vo, pp. G6. 



t Die Bildunosgesetze der Vogeleier in liistologischer uiid genetisclier 

 Beziehung iind das Transmutationsgesetz der Organismen von Dr. Geoeg 

 Seidlitz. Leipzig : 18G9. 8vo, pp. 58. 



