1883.] Zoology. 439 
the name Scolecomorphus kirku. In the same number of the 
Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Boulanger gives his 
reasons for regarding Rana circulosa of Rice and Davis in Jordan's 
Manual of Vertebrates as a synonym of Baird’s Rana septentrio- 
nalis——We have received through B. Westermann & Co., New 
York, the seventeen chromo-plates of Volume I., “Birds of 
Brehm’s Thierleben. They surpass anything of the sort which 
we have ever seen. The artist is Olof Winkler. The price, five 
marks for seventeen plates, is reasonable enough. The hovering 
of birds is discussed by several contributors to Nature of February 
1and 8. The general opinion seems to be that the bird while hov- 
ering is supported by an upward current of air; one writer, how- 
ever, maintains “ that, given a steady wind blowing with a velocity 
which lies somewhere between certain possible calculable limits, 
a hawk can remain fora time apparently motionless above a point; 
he is, in reality, descending a slightly inclined plane, and requires 
to recover vertically lost ground by the occasional use of his 
Wwings."——A new bird of paradise collected on the D’Entrecas- 
teaux island, south-east of New Guinea is described in the Zbis as 
Paradisea decora. To the same society Dr. F. Day showed 
examples of trout, viz., of the American “Brook trout,” reared 
in an aquarium; another reared at Howietoun, near Stirling, 
and a hybrid between the American and common English trout, 
all in illustration of his paper on variations in form and hybridism 
in Salmo fontinalis. The bower birds, regarded by Elliott and 
Salvadori as connected with the birds of Paradise, have recently 
šope of the islands. The entrance to its chamber is generally 
four or five inches in diameter, and the passage leading to it often 
two or three feet long, first descending and then ascending again. 
he chamber itself is about one foot and a half long, by one foot 
wide and six inches high, and is lined with grass and leaves. The 
ging and tuataras have their nests separately, one on each side 
