IINITEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XVll 



* Monograph of the Bats of North America,' by Mr. H. Allen, 

 which must be regarded as a most valuable contribution to our 

 knowledge of those animals, and has been worked up with great 

 care by the author. Professor Peters has also read many impor- 

 tant papers on different genera of Bats before the Berlin Academy 

 of Sciences, which have appeared in the ' Monatsberichte ' of that 

 Society ; he has also a monograph of the Chiroptera in prepara- 

 tion, which will be illustrated with numerous plates. Among 

 the numerous papers on the Cetacea, in which the osteology of 

 those animals is carefully studied for the purposes of generic 

 and specific determination, those of Mr, Plower, published in 

 the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society, may be regarded as 

 taking the first place. The editors of the ' Annales des Sciences 

 Naturelles ' have also published a very important posthumous 

 memoir by the late Professor Eschricht of Copenhagen, " On the 

 Geographical Distribution of the Northern Whales." Dr. Gray, 

 of the British Museum, has lately given us a new ' Catalogue of 

 Cetacea,' a work displaying a great amount of research, and bring- 

 ing together the results arrived at by former authors in a manner 

 which cannot but render it exceedingly useful. 



In recording the proceedings of Ornithologists, the first place 

 is due to our countryman Mr. John Gould, whose magnificent 

 works, on the Birds of Asia and of Britain, have each advanced 

 by several parts in the last two years. The former, as usual, con- 

 tains life-like representations of the many splendid and elegant 

 feathered inhabitants of the Asiatic continent ; the latter is dis- 

 tinguished from all previous illustrated works on British birds 

 by the insertion upon the plates of representations of the young 

 or nestling forms of many of the species, which cannot but be of 

 the greatest advantage to future investigators of this department 

 of the natural history of our island. Mr. Gould has also pub- 

 lished a new edition of the text of his great work on the Birds of 

 Australia, in the form of two octavo volumes, which will prove 

 more convenient for common reference than the bulky folios in 

 which the work originally appeared. Dr. Jerdon's 'Birds of 

 India,' of which the third and concluding volume made its appear- 

 ance in 1864, is likewise an exceedingly valuable text-book of the 

 ornithology of that magnificent region, and is especially impor- 

 tant on account of the great number of accurate personal observa- 

 tions on the habits of the birds which it contains. ' The Ibis ' 

 which has commenced a new series, under the able editorship of 

 Professor Alfred Newton, and the ' Proceedings of the Zoological 



LTTSTN. PBGC. — Session 1865-66. h 



