648 Recently published Ornithological Works. 
accounts of Willughby, Wolley, and other lesser lights of 
the ornithological world: he supplements this with useful 
notes on no less than two hundred and fifty-nine species of 
birds, and makes a point of tabulating the dates of arrival of 
the spring migrants. Of special interest are the first occur- 
rences in Britain of the Dusky Thrush and Egyptian Nightjar, 
the earliest record of the breeding of the Tufted Duck 
in this country, and the local appearances of the Sand- 
Grouse in 1888. Perhaps we should hardly object, in a 
popular book, to including the evidence of keepers and taxi- 
dermists, but we certainly do not, as yet, feel inclined to 
admit the Red-tailed Buzzard and the Spotted Sandpiper of 
America to the British list. 
105. Wilson on the Birds of the National Antarctic 
Hapedition. 
[National Antarctic Expedition. Natural History, vol ii. Vertebrata, 
Aves. By Edward A. Wilson, M.B. With 13 plates. London, 1907.] 
The second volume of the report on the Natural History of 
the National Antarctic Expedition (the publication of which 
was undertaken by the Trustees of the British Museum, on the 
condition that the specimens upon which it is based should 
be deposited in the National Collection at South Kensington) 
contains Dr. Wilson’s account of the birds met with by the 
Expedition. We need hardly say that it is of very great 
interest. No collection of birds has ever been previously 
made at a spot so far south as the winter-home of the 
‘Discovery,’ although, as bird-life is there nearly ap- 
proaching its extreme southern limit on the earth’s surface, 
the number of species met with was not so great as would 
have been the case a little further north. At the same time 
the novelty arising from the far-south locality (78° S. L.) 
greatly enhances the value of the series. 
The Penguin may be said to be the predominant factor of 
vertebrate life in the South Polar Seas, as the Ice-Bear is 
in the far north, and supplies the adventurous explorer with 
a corresponding amount of excellent food. The largest and 
finest living representative of this group is the Emperor 
