Recently published Ornithological Works. 577 



fifteen pages are devoted to a preliminary sketch, it 

 promises to be of some importance ; there is, however, no 

 continuation in April. Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., who was 

 visiting European Museums last year, now contributes an 

 interesting paper on the White-winged Gulls, with a coloured 

 plate of Larus kumlieni adult and immature. It will be 

 remembered that this species is about the size of an Iceland 

 Gull, but has some dark markings on the outer primaries, 

 these being uncoloured in the Iceland and Glaucous Gulls. 

 The last has also a " patterned " representative in L. nelsoni, 

 of which only the type from Alaska, an adult from the 

 same country, and an immature example from Vancouver 

 were known up to 1897, when another adult was obtained 

 at St. Michael's, Alaska, and one in Lower California. In 

 the North Pacific these two sections are linked by the 

 strongly patterned L. glaucescens to the Herring-Gull group. 

 Even in the pattern of the primaries of L. kumlieni there 

 is some variation, as is shown by Dr. D wight's diagrams 

 on p. 40. Mr. H. Lyman Clark's paper on the Feather 

 Tracts of Swifts and Humming-birds is illustrated by two 

 black-and-white plates, and well deserves the attention 

 of students of pterylosis. Mr. W. A. Anthony's Random 

 Notes on the Pacific Coast Gulls and his subsequent 

 Stray Notes from Alaska are examples of very pleasant 

 descriptive writing. Mr. H. J. Bowles, with his List of the 

 Birds of Tacoma, Puget Sound, evokes the interest due to 

 proximity to British Columbia; while Dr. C. H. Townsend's 

 Notes on the Birds of Cape Breton Island bring us actually 

 to British territory, though on the eastern side of America. 

 A paper by Mr. H. O. Jenkins on the Variations in Bryohates 

 villosus and its subspecies is illustrated by a map of the 

 distribution and by diagrams of the wing-spotting of the 

 eastern and western forms. Mr. Ruthven Deane (pp. 191- 

 209) contributes the first instalment of a very pleasing 

 correspondence between Audubon and Spencer F. Baird, 

 commencing with a letter written in 18-10 by the latter, 

 then a lad of fifteen, to the great ornithologist in his 

 fifty-eighth year. The kindliness of the veteran to the 

 beginner, who afterwards became so celebrated, is a highly 



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