NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 159 
we can well forgive him his peculiarities; we might easily 
complain of his subdivision of the Passeres, but we dare not, at 
a moment's notice (if we could after a life-long study), propose a 
better. 
A List of British Birds, with, as an Appendix, the ‘‘ Graduated 
List” for labelling Eggs. Compiled by Hersert W. 
Marspen. 35 pp. Gloucester: H. W. Marsden. 1881. 
Ir is difficult to perceive the exact purpose which the present 
publication, of which the name sufficiently indicates the nature, 
is intended to fulfil. Of dealers’ lists the name is legion. All 
are more or less founded on the last completed edition of 
Yarrell’s ‘History of British Birds.’ Mr. Marsden has copied 
his predecessors in little else than their antiquated system of 
classification ; nine times out of ten he has followed the nomen- 
clature adopted by Mr. H. T. Wharton in his ‘List of British 
Birds,’ which was reviewed in these colums four years ago 
(‘Zoologist,’ 1877, pp. 458 seq.). Not that we blame him for 
taking one of the latest authorities for his model ; but that he does 
so somewhat blindly is copiously illustrated by his divergences. 
For instance, Halieetus (No. 5) can only be spelt Haliaétus 
rightly; Prof. Newton (Yarrell, ed. 4, vol. i., p. 833) has shown that 
the specific name of the Black Redstart should be titys, not tithys 
(No. 67); ‘“‘Sylvia wndatus” (No. 81) is an amusing instance of the 
necessity for circumspection in changing a generic name; and 
Actitis hypoleucos (No. 245), Tringa subarcuata (No. 249), Tringa 
temmincku, Xema sabini, &c., seem very like cases of sinning 
against light. After Mr. Howard Saunders’s exhaustive eluci- 
dation of the synonymy of the Laride, it is grievous to see 
Rhodostethia rossi (Richardson, 1825) still given (No. 884) as the 
name of R. rosea (Macgillivray, 1824); and the appellations of 
Richardson’s and Buffon’s Skuas thrown back into the confusion 
of incorrect nomenclature. If Mr. Marsden disagrees with recent 
lists, he should at least regard the conclusions of the latest 
monographers; when he fails to do this latter, it is perhaps not 
surprising that he should come to some strange results regarding 
the generic titles of the Strigide. Ornithologists are not 
unanimous, it is true, in accepting Professor Newton’s inter- 
pretation of the Stricklandian Code in this matter; but he who 
follows him in calling the Barn Owl Aluco flammeus (No. 37) is 
