JULY 23, 1914] 
NATURE 
943 
conditions of the Atlantic in winter and summer. It 
is pointed out that the opening of the Panama Canal 
in 1915 gives a great opportunity for the different 
countries sending vessels to represent them of taking 
simultaneously an extensive series of observations 
from Europe to America. It is to be hoped that the 
different Governments will be induced to take part 
in carrying out this important work, and thus mark 
the union of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by a 
unique effort to add to our knowledge of the sea. 
NV... 5: B. 
ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES. 
Ses spring number (vol. vi., No. 1) of Bird Notes 
and News is devoted exclusively to the Plumage 
Bill, and its effect, if passed on workers in the feather- 
trade in this and other countries. It includes a good 
report of the debate which took place when the Bill 
came up for second reading, together with the divi- 
sion-list on that occasion. Individual opinions from 
various persons on the matter, as well as the views of 
scientific bodies, are also quoted. It is added that the 
vast number of bird-skins (many of them representing 
rare species of the paradise group) offered for sale at 
auctions in London affords fresh testimony of the need 
for prohibitive legislation. 
The March-April number of Bird-Lore records some 
of the steps which are being taken to enforce the 
recent regulations of the U.S. Federal Government 
with regard to the slaughter of game-birds and their 
transport from one State to another, special attention 
being directed to the seizures of long guns carrying 
half a pound of powder and a pound of shot. One 
of the iilustrations shows the costly monument recently 
erected in Salt Lake City to commemorate the gulls 
which saved the crops of the first Mormon settlers by 
devouring the grasshoppers by which they were being 
devastated. As the gulls had “the time of their 
lives,’ it is not apparent why a monument was 
required. 
The roseate spoonbill (Ajaia ajaja) of tropical 
America forms the subject of an article, illustrated by 
a coloured plate, in the issue of Bird-Lore for May 
and June. So long ago as 1858 it appears that the 
pink curlews, as they are locally called, on Pelican 
Island, Florida, were the prey of plume-hunters, some 
of whom are reported to have killed upwards of sixty 
a day, and from that time to this these beautiful birds 
have been persecuted by every man who could lay his 
hands on a shot-gun. Now, however, the National 
Association of Audubon Societies has succeeded in 
establishing reservations in Florida, where the spoon- 
bills may breed unmolested. 
An article on the stilt and another on the moorhen 
are among the more noteworthy contents of the April 
number of Wild Life, the former an account of the 
author’s success in photographing such a rare and 
shy species, and the latter for the beauty of the pic- 
tures. 
In view of the probable extermination of the species 
at no very distant date, owing to the introduction of 
foxes, an article by Mr. J. G. O’Donoghue, in the 
Victorian Naturalist for May, 1914, on the habits of 
the Victorian lyre-bird has a claim to more than 
ordinary interest. 
A paper by Prof. J. E. Duerden, published in the 
Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa for 
October, 1913, deals with the mode of development 
of the feathers of ostriches, and the entire absence of 
cruelty to the birds in clipping them, at the proper 
season, for market. 
Bird-lovers in South Africa owe a debt of gratitude 
to Mr. Alwin Haagner for the issue of the first part 
of a concise descriptive list of South African birds, * 
NO. 2334, VOL. 93| 
published as No. 3 of the bulletin series of the publica- 
tions of the South African Ornithologists’ Union. 
This part includes the ostrich, of which the South 
African representative is regarded as a distinct species, 
the penguins, divers, petrels, gulls, and terns, cor- 
morant tribe, ducks and geese, and the plover group. 
An article by H. W. Heushaw on birds commonly 
to be seen in town or country in the United States, 
illustrated by sixty-four small portraits in colour, 
forms one of the most attractive features of the May 
number of the National Geographic Magazine. Of 
more general interest are two pictures, taken by Mr. 
R. E. Croker, representing a colony of something like 
100,000 pelicans on the easternmost island of the Lobos 
de Afueva group, off Peru. Unhappily this vast 
colony, which had been unmolested for several years, 
has not escaped the attention of the guano-seekers, 
and, on a second visit, Mr. Croker found scarcely any 
pelicans near the old colony. “It isone. of the 
tragedies,” he remarks, ‘‘of the guano-industry that 
this important bird has received so little considera- 
tion.” 
It has been asserted that the Australian short-tailed 
petrel, or ‘‘mutton-bird”’ (Puffinus brevicaudus), takes 
no fewer than eight weeks to incubate its eggs. 
According, however, to a a note by Mr. J. Gabriel in 
the April number of the Victorian Naturalist, one 
out of a clutch of eight eggs placed under a domes- 
ticated hen was hatched in forty-six days, the re- 
mainder of the clutch being either broken or infertile. 
In his annual summary of bird-life in Norfolk, pub- 
lished in the May number of the Zoologist, Mr. J. H. 
Gurney records that spoonbills were seen last year at 
Breydon Broad at intervals from May 1 to August 16. 
As the result of a comparison of previous observa- 
tions, it appears that these birds generally reach Nor- 
folk during the prevalence of north-east winds, which 
are probably unfavourable to their northward migra- 
tion. 
As the result of an exhaustive study of the extensive 
series of cuckoos’ eggs and the foster-clutches with 
which they were associated (some three hundred in 
number) included in the fine collection of eggs re- 
cently presented by Mr. R. H. Fenton to Aberdeen 
University, Dr. J. Rennie, in an article published in 
vol. xix., No. 5, of the Proceedings of the Royal 
Physical Society of Edinburgh, arrives at the conclu- 
sion that the theory of the existence of different 
strains of cuckoos, severally characterised by laying 
eggs of distinctive types of colouring, will not hold 
good. According to this theory, as enunciated by the 
late Prof. A. Newton, one of these strains—‘‘ hedge- 
sparrow cuckoos’’—generally lays eggs assimilating 
in colour to those of hedge-sparrows in the nests of 
that species; while ‘‘ wagtail-cuckoos’’ act in an 
analogous manner in the case of the species from 
which they take their name, and so on. In the opinion 
of the author, the clutches in the Fenton collection 
lend no support to the theory of the existence of such 
strains, at all events in this country. This conclu- 
sion, it is urged, receives further support from the 
polyandrous habit of female cuckoos, as individual 
hens may mate at one time with a cock of the ‘‘ hedge- 
sparrow,’’ and at another with one of the ‘‘ wagtail”’ 
strain. The author, it may be added, alludes to these 
supposed strains as ‘‘subspecies,’” which is certainly 
a misuse of that term. 
The remarkable changes in the length and colour- 
ing of the beak and in the colour of the plumage 
undergone by the white ibis (Guira alba) during its 
development from the nestling to the adult stage are 
graphically illustrated in a coloured plate accompany- 
ing an article by C. W. Beebe, forming No. 12 of the 
first volume of Zoologica (New York. Zool. Soc.). In 
the nestling the short beak has dark barrings, and 
