TOO Recent Literature. CJanuary 



plantar arrangement of the tendons, the shape of the sternum, the os- 

 teology of the feet, etc., of such birds as do not come within 5000 miles 

 of Japan ! By leaving out all this extraneous matter, and by adopting the 

 same typography as in the 'History of British Birds,' enough space could 

 have been obtained for exhaustive synonymies and full descriptions. 



In regard to descriptions it may be stated that while there is one accom- 

 panying each species, it is in many, if not in most cases, insufficient. 

 Usually it only refers to the adult bird, while in some instances it is 

 hardly more than a pretense. What is thought of a specific description 

 of "-Sitta c(esia" (one is obliged to quote some of Mr. Seebohm's names 

 in this way) consisting of the following words only: "The Nuthatch 

 has the bill of a Woodpecker with the tail of the Tit" ! 



For those who know the birds which Mr. Seebohm treats of and the 

 names he gives them the present volume is useful, because it gives a 

 nearly complete list of all the birds hitherto recorded as inhabiting Japan, 

 with most of the published information as to their occurrence and their 

 habits, collected in one place. But it would have been more useful still, 

 if it had had been more complete in both respects. Another reviewer 

 has pointed out some of these omissions ('Nature' for Oct. 30, 1890), but 

 the most obvious one has not yet been mentioned, for the celebrated 

 Pitta nyinpha of the 'Fauna Japonica,' which our own Jouy re-discovered, 

 is entirely left out! 



On p. 32 Bubo blakistoni is given as peculiar to Japan, particularly 

 Yezzo, though it has been recorded from the mainland by Taczanowski. 



On p. 33 Picas major japotiicus is said to be confined to the three main 

 islands. This statement is wrong, for I do not believe there is a single 

 instance on record of this species having been found in Kiusiu ; I am 

 pretty certain that it does not even occur in the southern part of Hondo 

 beyond the line Owari-Tsuruga. 



On p. 309 the breeding range of Charadrius iiiongolicus is stated to 

 extend to the valley of the Amoor, although I have long ago shown it to 

 breed as far east and north as the Commander Islands, Kamtschatka. 

 This reminds me of the fact that in 1S87, in his great monograph of the 

 CharadriidcC (p. 148), Mr. Seebohm states that the eggs of this species are 

 "unknown," he having overlooked entirely that two years previously I 

 described a fully authenticated set collected by myself and now in the 

 collection of the U. S. National Museum. 



I could go on with similar remarks, but as a reviewer's space is limited, 

 and as I shall undoubtedly in the future have occasion to discuss these 

 and many other points in Mr. Seebohm's book I shall only briefly call 

 attention to the following, because they concern a group which I have 

 already treated of in detail before. 



The present writer in the 'Proceedings' of the U. S. National Museum 

 for 1S87 (Vol. X, pp. 416-429) published a 'Review' of the Japanese Pi- 

 geons, in which he treated of considerable new mateiial and corrected sev- 

 eral grave errors of previous authors. It is very discouraging to find that 

 one has labored in vain. Some of the things in that paper Mr. Seebohm 

 has seen — though in his peculiar manner, others he has entirely over- 

 looked. Of Janthoenas nitens he says that it was made a new species 



