Recently published Ornithological Works. 325 



1874-1905. It is as a great systematist that Guuther will 

 be remembered, but, as is shown by his work ' An Ijitro- 

 duction to the Study of Fishes/ he took a good deal o£ 

 interest in structure and life-history and other problems 

 apart from the discrimination of species and classification. 

 He was twice married, and his eldest son, Mr. R. T. Giinther, 

 who is a fellow and tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford, is 

 a distinguished zoologist, antiquary, and writer. 



XVIII. — Notices of recent Ornithological Publications, 



Baker on Indian Pigeons. 



[Indiau Pigeons and Doves. By E. C. Stuart Baker, F.Z.S., F.L.S., 

 M.B.O.U. Pp. xvi+260, 27 plates. London (Witherby). 8vo. 60s.] 



No separate work on the Columbidse of India has hitherto 

 appeared, and we must congratulate Mr. Stuart Baker on 

 having followed up his well-known ' Indian Ducks and their 

 Allies ' with a companion volume on the Pigeons. No one is 

 more competent to deal with this subject than our author, 

 since he has not only spent the greater part of his life in India, 

 where he has had unrivalled opportunities of observing and 

 studying the birds in their native haunts, but he has also a 

 very good Museum-knowledge of the birds, and is thus 

 enabled to present a very complete epitome of how and where 

 to shoot and collect Indian Pigeons, but also of our present 

 knowledge of their nomenclature and classification. 



The total number of species and subspecies dealt with 

 numbers fifty-one, and about half of them are depicted 

 on the twenty-seven coloured plates specially prepared by 

 Mr. Gronvold. 



Mr. Baker discusses at some length the question of 

 whether the typical Blue Rock-Pigeon [Columba I. livia} 

 ever occurs in India. He finds in the British Museum only 

 two examples (from Ladak) which he believes are really 

 identical with the European form, while a good many others 

 which have been referred to it are really intermediate between 

 this and the true Indian subspecies (C I. intermedia) with 



