BIRDS. 
73 
classification, which, however, being founded only on external characters, 
cannot be considered as a step forwards in the ornithological system. 
Th. Cantor has found the following birds on the Chinese Island 
Chusan : — Lanins erythronotns, Dicrurus halicassius, Turdus merula, 
Philedon sp., Sylvia Jiypolais, Hirundo erytJiropygia, Pyrgita montana. 
Pastor cristatellus, Pica vulgaris, Alcedo hengalensis, and Ardea sp. 
(Ann. ix. p. 482.) 
The reporter is only acquainted with the title of T. C. Jerdon’s Cata- 
logue of the Birds of the Peninsula of India, Madras, 1839, and of his 
Illustrations of Indian Ornithology, to be published in fifty coloured 
plates (Ann. ix. p. 242). 
A description of several Abyssinian Birds, mostly new, of the order of 
Climbers, by Dr. E. Riippell, consisting of ten species, will be mentioned 
in its proper place. 
Two numbers of A. Smith’s Illustrations of South Africa, the 15th 
and 16th, have been received in the past year. 
The Birds of America, from drawings made in the United States and 
their territories, by J. J. Audubon, vol. ii. 1842, is at present only known 
to me, from a copious notice in Silliman’s Amer. Journ. xlii. p. 130, from 
which the following is borrowed : — Since the completion of his first 
volume, Audubon has obtained 395 new subscribers, the half of whom 
are from the city of Boston alone, so that his work now numbers almost 
a thousand ; a case of liberal support, to a work on Natural History, 
without a parallel in the New World, and hardly even in the Old : at 
least there is no parallel to it in South Germany. This second volume 
contains 70 plates, with 136 figures of birds, besides a great number of 
etchings of plants, nests, insects, &c., and with the text, cost 14 dollars 
(about 2^ fl.), which is a reasonable price. There are seventy species 
of birds represented, twenty-six of which are not to be foimd in the 
work of Wilson, and seventeen in no other work on American Orni- 
thology. Townsend’s List of the Birds of the Rocky Mountain Region, 
the Oregon district, and the north-west coasts of America, is valuable 
to compare with the eastern species (Journ. of the Acad, of Nat. Sc. of 
Philad. viii. p. 151). A list of some birds, collected by Bridges in Chili, 
is contained in the Ann. ix. p. 509. 
Numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9, of Gould’s Birds of Australia, have appeared 
during the last year, and this splendid work is making rapid progress. 
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