103 Recent Ornithological Publications. 



Africa/ and make themselves familiar with its pages. We are 

 sure they will find it a most useful work ; and they will be able 

 to follow much more satisfactorily the remarks of our reviewer. 



2. French. 

 In the second volume of the ' Bulletin ' of the " Nouvelles Ar- 

 chives du Museum/^ our friend M. Jules Verreaux describes 

 and figures three new species of birds. They are : — Tanysiptera 

 riedeli, fi'om an unknown locality in the Malay Archipelago ; 

 Myiobius latirostris, from St. Lucia, in New Granada ; and Cen- 

 tropus lafi'esnayanus, from Madagascar. The types of the first 

 two are contained in the Paris Museum ; the specimens upon 

 which the last is founded were discovered by the author in the 

 collection of the late Baron de Lafresnaye ; but other examples 

 of it have been since obtained on the east coast of Madagascar 

 by M. Grandidier. Prof. Schlegel, however (P. Z. S. 1866, 

 p. 424), considers it identical with the common C. tolu. 



The Editor of our respected contemporary, the " Revue et 

 Magasin de Zoologie^ (1867, pp. 78-80), has done us the 

 honour of noticing and partly reproducing some remarks which, 

 on a former occasion (Ibis, 1865, p. 223), we made on the orni- 

 thological matter contained in his Journal for 1864. So great 

 is our obtuseness, that we are unable to perceive how they could 

 with justice be considered to be an article '^ un peu acerbe.^^ We 

 said that M. Max'chand's figures of nestling-birds were "some- 

 what coarsely drawn.'^ This assertion our reviewer does not 

 deny ; he only compares them, in this respect, to the representa- 

 tive of a Solan-Gosling which appeared in 'The Ibis^ (1866, 

 pi. i.), and says that the plates in his Journal possess " toutes 

 les qualites de la plus grande verite dans Paspect des etrcs 

 quMles font si bien connaitre." Whether the comparison is 

 just, we leave fearlessly to the discrimination of ornithologists ; 

 but, as we did not then question the fidelity of M. Marchand^s 

 plates, we do not quite see why their accuracy should be urged 

 as an excuse for the difficulty attending the artistic delineations 

 of down -clad birds. If we were disposed to be over-critical, 

 we might ask whether it was usual for the hallux in Pandion 



