NOTICES OF NEW BOOKs. 463 
facts. On perusing the pages of this new edition, no reflective 
reader can fail to perceive both the amount of condensed information 
which it contains, and the many new lines of investigation which it 
suggests. We can conceive no happier treatment of the subject. 
Since our last notice of the work (‘ Zoologist,’ 1877, p- 35) two 
more parts have appeared, the last, recently issued, making the 
fourth part of the second volume now in the hands of subscribers. 
The species therein dealt with are the Rose-coloured Starling, 
Chough, Raven, Black and Grey Crows, Rook, Daw, and Pie. 
In his treatment of the Carrion Crow and the Hooded or Grey 
Crow, we notice a departure from the usual line adopted by 
systematists, Prof. Newton considering that these birds “should 
be regarded as members of a single dimorphic species, and the 
inability to point out why this species should possess that 
admittedly exceptional quality is no more an argument against 
that view than is the inability to explain why a wholly black 
plumage should prevail in nearly all the species of Corvus, while 
in a few others the black should be varied by grey or white.” We 
have not space here to review the evidence which is adduced in 
support of the proposed fusion of what have hitherto been usually 
regarded as two distinct species. Suffice it to say that Professor 
Newton, arriving at the conviction that “it is almost impossible for 
a scientific naturalist to retain the time-honoured belief that they 
are distinct species,” unites them under the heading “Crow,” and 
traces very instructively the geographical distribution of the two 
forms. His remarks on the “ Passeres” and “ Picarie” (pp. 266— 
268) deserve attentive perusal. 
The Popular Science Review. Edited by W. S. Datras, F.L.S., 
Assistant Secretary of the Geological Society. 8vo, pp. 446. 
With illustrations. London: Hardwicke and Bogue. 1878. 
We have received from the publishers of this quarterly 
journal the volume for 1878, addressed “To the Editor of ‘The 
Zoologist,’” and presumably therefore intended for notice in these 
pages under the head of “ Notices of New Books.” Amongst the 
zoological papers which it contains we may especially refer 
to that by Mr. Henry Woodward on Armoured Fishes, and on 
Volvox globator, by Mr. A. W. Bennett. Prof. Martin Duncan’s 
notes on the Ophiurans, or the Sand and Brittle Stars, and 
