NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 471 



The Auk. Vol. xxxii. Nos. 3 and 4. American Ornithologists' 

 Union, Cambridge, Mass. July and October, 1915. 

 75 cents each. 



The last of these two numbers of this quarterly journal of 

 American ornithology completes the volume and contains the 

 index, and some interesting papers and notes. Conspicuous 

 among these are Mr. Outram Bangs's " Notes on Dichromatic 

 Herons and Hawks," in which he, rightly in our opinion, pleads 

 for the suppression as species of some of the various white or 

 rufous phases of well-known forms which have been allowed 

 specific rank in the past, such as the Great White Heron of 

 Florida, which accumulated evidence shows to breed freely with 

 coloured forms; and Mr. C. E. Johnson's very complete and 

 careful study of what he calls a four-winged Wild Duck — the 

 precise species is the Green-winged Teal (Nettium carolinense) 

 which is hardly more than a subspecies of our familiar little 

 bird. The subject was a female, and " had no difficulty in 

 flying, but was peculiar from the fact that it flew out from some 

 thick grass bordering a small creek back in the woods," and had 

 failed to migrate with the rest of its species. The super- 

 numerary wings sprang from the under side of the true wings at 

 the region of the elbow ; they were dwarfed and without quills, 

 their covering being of the character of under wing-coverts. 



In the July number there is an admirable paper on the Bock- 

 Dove, which Dr. C. W. Townsend, the author, calls Columba 

 domestica, which name, according to Stejneger, must replace 

 C. lima for the familiar Blue Rock! This bird, it seems, has 

 become feral in American cities as well as in Europe, having, of 

 course, been originally introduced in a domestic state. In 

 America there has evidently been a much more complete 

 reversion to the typical colour than here, because Dr. Townsend 

 finds the blue rock colouration the dominant one, which it 

 certainly is not in London at all events, or in any English town 

 we know of. Blue birds were, however, also dominant in Calcutta 

 in our time, but here there may have been an intermixture with 

 the Eastern race of the Bock-Dove (C. intermedia), which in 

 India frequents inhabited places as well as rocky wilds. Albinism 

 seems more common in feral American Pigeons than in English 

 ones, but appears to be eliminated by Hawks in country places. 



