50 
ZOOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
the namS of Colymbides.^^ These are succeeded by the '^Lon- 
gipennes (Laridcs and Procellariidai) , in the midst of which 
the work at present breaks off. The plates are beautifully exe- 
cuted, and contain a marvellous amount of details, chiefly of the 
osteology, but some of the myology of birds, both recent and 
fossil. The new species (^escribed or figured will be found men- 
tioned in the special part of this Record under their respective 
families as above named. 
Parker, W. K. On some Fossil Birds from the Zebbug Cave, 
Malta. Trans. Zool. Soc. vi. pp. 119-124, pi. xxx. 
The specimens before mentioned (Zool. Rec. ii. p. 57) are de- 
scribed. Unfortunately the most interesting of them (the head 
of Cygnus falconeri, which was nearly a third larger than C. olor) 
is hot figured. 
Pettigrew, J. B. On the various Modes of Flight in relation 
to Aeronautics. Journ. Roy. Inst. Gr. Brit. 22 March, 
1867, pp. 14. 
An abstract of a very interesting lecture delivered by the 
author, which has since appeared in the ^Linnean Transactions' 
for the present year j but the subject has too little of pure zoo- 
logy in it to be here dwelt upon. 
PucHERAN, — . Sur les indications que pent fournir la Geo- 
logic, pour Pexplication des differences que presentent les 
Faunes actuelles. Rev. et Mag. de Zoologie, 1867, pp. 161- 
169, 197-199, 257-271. 
This series of articles (Zool. Rec. ii. pp. 58, 59, hi. p. 47) is 
at length concluded. In those above cited, the author, after enu- 
merating the birds common to Algeria and North-eastern 
Africa, proceeds to name the species peculiar to the islands of 
Borneo, Sumatra, and Java, and finds he cannot determine the 
general characters by which the ornis of the one is distinguished 
from that of the others, any more than he can decide whether 
there is any physical or climatal harmony between the Indian 
Archipelago and its mammalian or ornithic inhabitants. It is 
evident, he says, that one of the islands has been a centre of dis- 
tribution to the others. Geologists, then, must show which of 
them has existed first ; and it is most probable that the three 
just named have once formed a continent. In this case it is 
easy to conceive that the slight differences separating the ani- 
mals of one from those of the other have originated from the 
time when isolation began. The same problem can also be laid 
down with respect to Polynesia; and a few of the birds found in the 
Feejee, Salomon, and Samoan Islands are enumerated in support 
of the same view, the distribution of the Columbce being especially 
dwelt upon. From a consideration of the mode in which the 
coral islands of the Pacific are formed, it is clear that the birds 
which inhabit them now did not exist there oncej they must 
