54 
Recent Literature. 
[J ;tmiary 
Mr. Dutcher’s paper is short, occupying less than three pages. The 
author argues that the Fish Crow is “a permanent 'whiter resident in its 
northern habitat [/'. e. the Lower Valley of the Hudson River, Long 
Island, the coast line of Connecticut, etc.), instead of a rare summer 
visitor 1 '’ as has been generally supposed. The evidence cited is apparently 
conclusive, but its bearing would be more fairly stated if the word 
winter ” had been omitted from the sentence quoted above. 
In general appearance the present volume offers little that can be criti- 
cized. The paper is good and the typographical execution nearly faultless. 
We do not like the use of capitals for proper specific names in the scientific 
titles, but that is a point on which naturalists are not agreed, the botanists 
refusing to accept the uniform rule followed by most zoologists. The 
seemingly capricious use of capitals for the English names, especially 
noticeable in Dr. Merriam’s paper, is less defensible, and we are at a loss 
to understand the total absence of an index, the volume otherwise being 
apparently complete. 
But these are trifling matters and, as a whole, Volume I of the “Tran- 
sactions of the Linnaean Society” is a credit to its originators and publish- 
ers. May the series which is to follow be a very long one. — W. B. 
Saunders’s Notes on some Larid^e from Peru and Chili.* — The 
present paper treats of a collection of Laridce made on the coasts of Peru 
and Chili by Capt. A. H. Markham of H. M. S. “Triumph.” Fifteen 
species are represented; among these is a specimen (the third one known) 
of Xema furcatum , the large southern congener of the circumpolar X. 
sabinii. The text is accompanied by a beautiful colored plate, illustrating 
the adult and young plumages of this “rarest of Gulls, and one of the 
rarest of all known birds,” now rediscovered after an interval of forty years’ 
fruitless search. 
Mr. Saunders is one of the few scientific writers who possess the 
happy faculty of making a technical treatise interesting to the average 
reader. The present paper is not inferior to his previous ones in this 
respect; moreover it has a direct value to the student of North 
American ornithology, for much of its subject-matter — especially the 
concluding remarks on the coloration, changes of plumage, distribution, 
and probable ancestral origin of the Gulls of the Pacific Ocean — relates 
to species which are included in the North American Fauna. — W. B. 
Hoffman’s List of Birds observed at Fort Berthold, D. T.f — 
In a paper of about nine pages Dr. Hoffman gives the result of some 
*On some Laridae from the coasts of Peru and Chili, collected by Capt. Albert H. 
Markham, R. N., with Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of the Group in the 
Pacific. By Howard Saunders, F. L. S., F. Z. S. Proc. Zool. Soc. of London, June 6, 
1882, pp. 520-530; with colored plate of Xema furcatum adult and young. 
fList of Birds observed at Ft. Bejrthold, D. T., during the month of September, 1881. 
By W. J. Hoffman, M. D. Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Feb. I, 1882. 
