398 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



cheered the dreary forecastle. This practice has greatly fallen 

 in disuse ; sailing-ships will soon be but shadows, and rules are 

 more stringent on steamships. 



Dr. Butler's first volume is devoted to " the smaller foreign 

 birds," and the second volume to the larger species. In the two 

 volumes there are described " about a thousand species of cage- 

 birds," with directions how to feed and how to house them ; 

 while the ornithological gleanings from other writers constitute 

 material for the production of another of those modern tractates 

 on natural history with which the printing presses now heave. 

 Before taking leave of these volumes we will give one extract : — 



" It has often been incorrectly asserted, and Darwin has repeated 

 the error in his ' Descent of Man,' that ' the power of song and 

 brilliant colours have rarely been both acquired by the males of the 

 same species.' To those who have kept a great many species, it is well 

 known that many of the most gorgeously coloured birds sing remark- 

 ably well : amongst the Thrushes, the Blue Bock-Thrush is one of 

 the finest songsters, Leiothrix is a notoriously grand songster, several 

 of the gorgeous Tanagers sing sw T eetly, the flaming Virginian Cardinal 

 is an acknowledged vocalist of merit, and many of the brightly coloured 

 Finches sing excellently ; the Icteridce, (with their startling contrasts 

 of yellow, orange, scarlet with black and white) number not a few fine 

 singers in their ranks, the Fruit-suckers of the East (Ghloropsis) are 

 fine performers, and we have one of the most brilliant of all living 

 birds— the King Bird of Paradise —gifted with a love chant not unlike 

 that of the Skylark." 



This publication should find many constant readers in this 

 country. We wish we had had it with us when in South Africa. 



Check-list of North American Birds. Prepared by a Committee 

 of the American Ornithologists' Union. Third edition, 

 revised. New York : American Ornithologists' Union. 



The first edition of this List was published in 1886, and the 

 second (revised) in 1895. The changes in nomenclature from 

 the second edition are numerous, and are due, we are told, 

 mainly to two causes : " The recent unprecedented activity in 

 bibliographic research, abroad as well as in America, and the 

 strict application of the law of priority." Many generic changes 

 have resulted from raising to generic rank various groups recog- 

 nized only as subgenera in the first and second editions of the 

 List. This is a welcome reform ; a subgenus is frequently a 



