Recent Ornithological Publications. 343 



upon it. Prom what has been before said of Professor Schlegel's 

 work in this Journal^ it is, or ought to be, well known to our 

 readers that it already consists of numerous monographs of genera 

 and families of birds, and forms really a necessary supplement 

 to, and commentary on, the great ' Conspectus Avium' of the late 

 Prince C. L. Bonaparte, so unfortunately left incomplete, thus 

 being, without exaggeration, indispensable to every student of 

 ornithology who desires to ground his scientific labours on a 

 sure basis. We regret to learn that the present work, as is the 

 case with so many books on natural history, is anything but 

 remunerative to its author ; but we are confident that ornitho- 

 logists, on examination, will find we are justified in so strongly 

 recommending it to their notice. It gives, in all the groups 

 treated of, a concise description of every species ; and what is 

 still more valuable in the present state of science, the variation 

 noticed in individual specimens is carefully indicated, whether 

 it be variation in form, coloration, or size, the latter particular 

 being especially attended to. 



In the First Number for the last year of the ' Nederlandsch 

 Tijdschrift voor de Dierkunde' — the organ of the E-oyal Zoolo- 

 gical Society " Natura Artis Magistra " of Amsterdam — Pro- 

 fessor Schlegel announced (p. 1) the discovery of a new Bird 

 of Paradise in the Island of Waigiou by Dr. H, A. Bernstein, 

 which that indefatigable traveller proposed to call Schlegelia 

 calva ; and in a later Number of the same Journal (p. 320) he de- 

 fines this new genus as follows : — " Pileus ex fere toto calvus, 

 paucis tantwn striis plumatis^ instructis. Rectrices dues media 

 in mari longissime, reflexce, in spiram contorts." Dr. Sclater has 

 just received an engraving of this bird from Holland, and has 

 kindly drawn our attention to the remarkable similarity which 

 exists between it and the plate in the ' Journal' of the Philadelphia 

 Academy (vol. ii. pi. 15.), representing Diphyllodes wilsoni, 

 a similarity so great that we think it scarcely possible the two 

 supposed species can be otherwise than identical. It is of 

 course hazardous to pronounce an opinion of this sort without 

 actual comparison of the type specimens, but in this case 

 we think Dr. Sclater cannot be mistaken. The only apparent 



