350 Kecenthj pxMished Ornithologicnl. Works. 



Ficnmnus, Conopophagn, Microbafes, X'lphorhynchus, Sip- 

 tornis, Jutomolns, Manacus, Phyllomyias, Habrura, Micro- 

 cercnlus, Polioptila, Spoj'ophila, Catamenia, Phrygilus, 

 Cyanerpes, h'idosornis, Cacicus, Amblycercus, Molothrus) are 

 characterised. 



Dewar on Indian Birds. 



[A Bird Calendar for nortliern India. By Douglas Dewar. Pp. viii4- 

 211. London (Thacker), 1916. 8vo., 6s.] 



In " A Bird Calendar for northern India " Mr. Dewar 

 attempts to epitomize for the general reader the interesting 

 notes recorded by Hume, Blauford and others on the nidi- 

 fication and migration of Indian birds. He has succeeded 

 in giving a very fair idea of the movements of the more 

 common birds in the extreme north and north-west of 

 India, and the book may also be of some use to beginners 

 in the art of egg-collecting. 



It is perhaps unfair to expect ornithological accuracy in 

 a little work of this scope, but the inaccuracies are so 

 numerous and some so glaring that they cannot be passed 

 over in silence. Thus Mr. Dewar writes of the Sarus 

 Crane building a. floating nest, and adds : "a favourite place 

 is some low-lying field where the water is too deep to admit 

 of the growing of rice.'' Again, he speaks of lora's eggs as 

 being of a " salmon hue" (p. 72), wbereas the normal tint is 

 grey and the exception salmon, and on the very next page he 

 describes the Tailor-birds' eggs as '^ white spotted with red," 

 quite ignoring the well-known fact that the eggs may be 

 wliite, pink or blue in ground-colour and either speckled, 

 spotted or dotted with any shade of red or brown. Where, 

 too, shall we find the "yellow and sable" female Minivets 

 to which the author refers (p. 51) ; we were under the 

 impression that the females, unlike the males, had no black 

 on their plumage beyond a little on their tails. Again, we 

 should hardly have expected the author of " The making of 

 Species " to fall into the primitive error of writing about 

 subspecies interbreeding (p. 47). Surely the castigator of 

 Darwin and Huxley himself knows that geographical races 



