NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 437 



these birds do not extend beyond Celebes, never having been 

 met with in the Moluccas, or in Polynesia, New Guinea, or 

 Australia ; but it is difficult to account for the non-appearance 

 of Swifts and Swallows, except as occasional visitants from 

 Australia. Parrots, on the other hand, are well represented. 

 Besides the very typical Stringops habroptilus, there are seven 

 species belonging to the genera Platycercus and Nestor, all of 

 which are peculiar to New Zealand and her satellites. On the 

 subject of Cuckoos, Sir Walter Buller has some interesting 

 observations : — 



" We have," he says, " in New Zealand two species of Cuckoo belonging 

 to different genera, both migratory and both parasitic. One of these, the 

 Long-tailed Cuckoo, which is a native of the Society Islands, visits us in 

 the summer and breeds here, entrusting the task of rearing its young to a 

 little warbler not larger than an English Wren. It arrives year after year 

 during the second week of October, and leaves again before the end of 

 February — this migratory habit, persevered in through long generations, 

 having become a necessary part of its natural existence. In the whole 

 range of ornithological biography there is perhaps nothing|more marvellous 

 than this punctual annual migration across some 1500 miles of ocean. 

 The other species, known as the Shining Cuckoo, visits us from Australia, 

 performing its journey of 1000 miles with the same wonderful precision as 

 to dates of arrival and departure, my register showing a maximum variation 

 of only five days during a continuous period of ten years. Curiously 

 enough, this wild little caterpillar-hunter entrusts the rearing of its young 

 to the same bird that performs that friendly office for its predatory congener 

 four times its size." (Introduction, p. xli.). 



Further on (p. lv) he remarks : — 



" Seeing that the Shining Cuckoo {Chrysococcyx lucidus) is met with in 

 New Guinea, and probably further west, that it is likewise found in tropical 

 Australia, and that it comes to us from the north, or north-west, — for it 

 always makes its appearance first at the extreme north, — it is easy to 

 understand that the migratory impulse has been inherited from time 

 immemorial, and the more so as the closely-allied species {C. jilagosus) is 

 also a summer visitant to the temperate and southern portions of Australia. 

 But it is very difficult to imagine why the Long-tailed Cuckoo [Eudyuamis 

 taitensis), which hibernates in the warm islands of the Pacific, ranging over 

 more than 40° of longitude, should make its annual pilgrimage across 1500 

 miles of ocean to New Zealand." 



Here, for the present at least, we must take leave of our 

 author, although there is very much more in his Introduction 



