262 Anali/tical Notices of Books. 



gium, wing-covertSj lower part of the back, and the tail, yellow; 

 middle feathers of the tail entirely black, lateral ones black on 

 their margins. 



Of the ten Birds from South America only four are represented 

 to be new. These are the Mo/msa/u^ca; Dusky-brown, with the 

 shafts of the feathers yellowish ; quill and tail feathers without 

 spots ; with a white spot on the throat, and a black fascia on the 

 breast : Muscicapu violentUy Tail six inches long, strongly forked ; 

 body cinereous, beneath white ; head black, the feathers of the 

 vertex golden-yellow at the base ; M. tanioptera, Cinereous, 

 wings and tail black ; throat, abdomen, a broad fascia on the 

 wings, and the tip of the tail, white : and M. pullata, Cinereous, 

 wings and tail black ; tail forked, its outer feather being white 

 on the exterior side. The remaining birds, although previously 

 named by other authours, are now for the first time accurately 

 described. They are the Picus rubricollis^ Gmel., Dendro- 

 colciptes ungustirostris, Vieill., Tanagra Jlava^ Gmel., Capri' 

 niulgi/s semitonpiatus, Gmel., and Rallus nigricans^ Vieill. ; the 

 Fringilla Jlaveola being noticed merely for the purpose of fixing 

 its habitat to Brazil. 



The papers relating to Erpetology are four in number, three 

 being from the pen of Dr. Harlan and one from that of Mr. Wood. 

 To the former we are indebted for the " Description of a new 

 species of Biped Seps.'^ S. sexlinealu. Body above and beneath 

 whitish, clothed with equal rounded scales, compactly imbricate ; 

 top of the head l)lackish, furnished with twelve irregularly shaped 

 scales or plates, (similar to those of the Ophisaurus,) of different 

 figures and unequal sizes ; the three largest of the plates are 

 placed one before the other, and the nine smaller are distributed 

 around the three first. Three dark punctuated lines on each side 

 of the body extend from the neck to the middle of the tail, run 

 into each other anteriorly, and form a single black line which 

 passes through the eyes extending to the nostrils : rictus of the 

 mouth wide : nostrils situate on a line with the eyes near the ex- 

 tremity of the snout : a single row of minute teeth lines each 

 maxilla : (ail rather more than one-fourth the length of the body, 

 cylindrical, somewhat subulate : anus a transverse slit, one inch 



