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1876.] Recent Literature. 485 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Fritscn’s Brrps or Evroprs.! — This work is by an accomplished 
zodlogist, the author of an elaborate memoir on the cephalopods of the 
cretaceous formation of Bohemia, and more recently of a work on the 
laws of migrations of the birds of Europe, containing “an immense 
amount of data, which have been worked up most satisfactorily,” as 
stated by Mr. R. B. Sharpe in the Zodlogical Record for 1874. The 
present work briefly describes the orders, families, genera, and species 
of European birds, with their most important synonyms and diagnoses, 
and notes on breeding habits and distribution. These descriptions, con- 
joined with the chromo-lithograph of each species, — executed in most 
cases nearly as well as the figures in the United States government 
reports, but nearly all reduced below the natural size, — will enable one 
to readily identify any European bird. The classification is perhaps 
antiquated, beginning with the birds of prey, but the treatment of the 
subject is that of a skilled ornithologist. It is evidently inferior to Dr. 
Coues’s admirable Key to North American Birds, though we are not sure 
but that a compact work of this nature, accompanied by an atlas of 
chromo-lithographic plates and published for fifty dollars, would not be 
welcomed by amateur ornithologists, though Coues’s Key on the one hand, 
and Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway’s magnificent work on the other, leave 
almost nothing to be desired by the American student who lives in a 
town or city having in its library Audubon’s Birds of America and the 
government and state reports containing the ornithology of the Western 
and Pacific States. 
Dr. Fritsch’s work is highly spoken of by Dr. Hartlaub, Von Homeyer, , 
anda reviewer in Cabanis’ Journal fiir Ornithologie, and would form 
à valuable work of reference in any library. 
Rivey’s Ercuru Report on tHe Noxious Insects or Missourt.? 
— The Colorado potato beetle, the canker worm, the army worm, the 
Rocky Mountain locust, and the grape Phylloxera receive much attention 
îm this report, and fresh information is given regarding their habits, dev- 
astations, and the means of combating them. It is shown by the experi- 
ments of Professor Kedzie that Paris green does not poison the soil or 
become absorbed by the plants, and the reporter insists that, used with 
Caution, it is the best remedy for the ravages of the Doryphora. He 
Opts and extends Walsh’s view that this beetle gradually spread to the 
Atlantic from the “mountain region of Colorado,” and in another place 
(page 10) that “the native home of the species is the more fertile coun- 
Tenn rons chte der Végels Europa’s. Von Dr. ANTON FRITSCH. Prag. ; 1853-70. 
Salen, ar PP. 506, with atlas of 61 plates, folio. S. E. Cassino, Naturalists’ Agency, 
En an 0. 
, Eighth Annual Report on the Noxious, Beneficial, and other Insects of the State of 
mari. By C, V, Riley. 8vo. 1876. 
