72 Address. [Feb., 



lerbury contributes another of the birds of Aden and its neighbour- 

 hood ; Dr. T. von Madarasz describes two new birds from Tibet; and 

 Mr. Sharpe has a notice on a collection of birds from Muscat and others 

 from Fao and Bushire in the Persian Gulf. Mr. Murray of the Karach 1 

 Museum has issued a prospectus for a new edition of Jerdon's ' Birds of 

 India,' rendered necessary by the large additions to the number of species 

 and the modifications of system introduced since the first edition was 

 published. The number of Indian birds now known may be estimated 

 to be nearly 1,700, whilst Jerdon has given only 1,008, and many of 

 these being imperfectly or inaccurately described are scarcely identifi- 

 able. In this connection, mention must be made of Dr. Stejneger's 

 scheme of classification in Mr. T. S. Kingsley's fourth volume of the 

 1 Standard Natural History, ' published in Boston. It appears to be almost 

 entirely new, that is, as regards the larger divisions of the Class Aves, 

 and especially in relation to its fossil forms, and is spoken of by Mr. 

 Evans in the Zoological Record as the most remarkable ornithological 

 work of the year. In ' Ornish a new periodical for ornithology, issued 

 at Vienna by Drs. R. Blasius and G. v. Hayek, we have a paper by Dr. 

 Blasius on the birds of Celebes, and Mr. H. O. Forbes, in ' A Natu- 

 ralist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago,' gives notes on the Avian 

 Fauna of the Keeling Islands, Sumatra, Timor-laut, and Buru. 



An account of the earth- snakes of the peninsula of India and of 

 Ceylon by Colonel R. H. Beddome appears in the Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History. In the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Mr. 

 G. A. Boulenger gives a list of the species of Batrachians added to the 

 British Museum since 1882, which includes several Indian species and a 

 new one from Perak. Those interested in these studies will find a dis- 

 cussion on the classification adopted by Mr. Boulenger in the Bulletin de 

 la Societe Zoologique de France. In the American Naturalist, Mr. A. W. 

 Butler has notes on the hibernation of Tortoises and Batrachians, 

 and M. G. Tirant has published in Saigon ' Notes sur les Reptiles et 

 les Batraciens de la Cochinchine et du Cambodge,' whilst A. A. W. 

 Hubrecht, in ' Midden Sumatra,' gives a list of the same animals from that 

 island. This fauna has been examined for south-east Borneo by T. G. 

 Fischer (Arch, fur Nat. li) ; for Mindanao in the Philippines by the 

 same writer (T. B. Hamb. ii), and for China by O. Bcettger (Verh. xxiv, 

 xxv) ; who describe many new species and offer much of interest to 

 Indian herpetologists. 



Invertebrata. — In Conchology, we have to record the continua- 

 tion of Sowerby's 'Thesaurus Conchy liorum,' and of the 'Land and 

 Freshwater Mollusca of India' by an old member of our Society, Colonel 

 Godwin-Austen ; of the latter the fifth part has been received. The 



