NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 91 



to inspire the conclusions of another Darwin. We want more 

 recorders before we can anticipate new prophets. 



It is impossible, with regard to space, to give many extracts. The 

 author narrates one experience of the destruction of Pheasants' 

 e gg s Dv Crows. In a Scotch plantation, where thousands of 

 Pheasants are annually reared and turned down, and in a 

 slippery path along the sea-coast, "we found several sucked 

 Pheasant's eggs, evidently the work of Crows, nor had we gone 

 far before we came suddenly upon a whole family of Hooded 

 Crows, five young and two old birds. In the course of 

 about a quarter of a mile we counted over a hundred empty 

 shells which had evidently been carried to the path and there 

 devoured. How many more might have been discovered had we 

 searched it is impossible to say, but we saw ample evidence of 

 the wholesale destruction which a family of Crows is capable of 

 committing among Pheasants' eggs." 



To those interested in the discussion as to hereditary trans- 

 mission of ideas and experience, a fact related of the Grey 

 Peacock Pheasant, Polyplectron chinquis, a bird inhabiting the 

 Indo-Chinese countries, will not be unacceptable. " We are told 

 that when the young of this species were first hatched in the 

 Zoological Gardens, a Bantam Hen was employed as a foster 

 mother, and that the chicks would follow close behind her, never 

 coming in front to take food, so that, in scratching the ground, 

 she frequently struck them with her feet. The reason for the 

 young keeping in her rear was not understood until, on a sub- 

 sequent occasion, two chicks were reared by a hen P. chinquis, 

 when it was observed that they always kept in the same manner 

 close behind the mother, who held her tail widely spread, thus 

 completely covering them, and there they continually remained 

 out of sight, only running forward when called by the hen to pick 

 up some food she had found, and then immediately retreating to 

 their shelter." 



A question in nomenclature seems to be raised by the name 

 Megapodius Layardi, Tristran, 1879. In 1869 Mr. Sclater had 

 for the same bird proposed the name M. brazieri, "founded on an 

 egg from Banks I." Mr. Ogilvie-Grant is probably quite 

 canonical in adopting the later description made from the bird 

 itself. Would the same law apply to the description of a lepido- 



