1919-] Recently published Ornithological Works. 133 



scenes after his return from some months on the western 

 front, and the contrast of " creeping through slime-filled 

 holes beneath the skrieking of swift metal" and "splashing 

 one's plane through companionable clouds three miles above 

 the little jagged hero-filled ditches, and dodging other 

 sudden-born clouds of nauseous fumes and blasting heart 

 of steel,'' with the " great green wonderland of the tropical 

 jungle " is undoubtedly vast ; at the same time all is not 

 peace even in the tropical jungle, as witness the author's 

 account of the march of the so-called " array ants " across 

 a pit excavated by him to entrap the unwary dweller of the 

 forest. 



The essays are full of observations of bird- and other 

 animal-life, and the descriptions of many of the scenes 

 entrancing, and make one long to join him in the primeval 

 forest-lands of Guiana. 



Written for the general public and not for specialists, the 

 facts recorded are of less importance than the impressions 

 created in the mind by the reading of the fascinating 

 descriptions, which should surely stimulate all nature- 

 lovers to endeavour some time in their lives to visit the 

 exuberant forest-regions of South America. 



Fdnis on Bird-song. 



[Contribution a I'etude des cris et dii chant des oiseaux dans ses 

 rapports avec la musique, par M. F. de Fenis. Bull. Inst, G6n. 

 Psychol. Paris, xvii. 1917, pp. 87-130.] 



M. de Fenis deals with the voice of birds from the point 

 of view of psychology, and endeavours to trace the analogy 

 between the evolution of bird-song and that of the human 

 voice. After a chapter showing how the voice of birds 

 corresponds to the locality and surrounding in which they 

 live, he proceeds to discuss the great difficulty of the 

 notation or representation on paper of the voices of birds. 

 This he himself attempts by a combination of ordinary 

 musical notation with a syllabic rendering of the words. 



In his final conclusion he traces the origin of the highly 

 specialized musical forms of the present day from the very 



