Recently published Ornithological Works. 571 
Pigeon of which the author has been unable to describe the 
breeding. 
76. Menegaux on the Birds of Ecuador. 
[Mission du Service gdographique de l’Armee pour la mesure d’un Arc 
de Meridien Equatorial en Amerique du Sud, sous la Control e scientifique 
de l’Academie des Sciences de France 1899-1906. ^tude des oiseaux de 
l’Equateur rapportes par le Dr. Rivet. Par A. Menegaux. 4to. 128 pp.] 
The French scientific mission, sent out to Quito in 1899 
to examine the arc of the meridian under the Equator 
measured in the seventeenth century, was accompanied by 
Dr. Rivet as medical officer. Dr. Rivet, during the five 
years that he stayed in Ecuador, made a collection of 
birds of which M. Menegaux gives us an account in the 
present memoir. The collection consists of 885 specimens, 
belonging to 290 species. 
The philosophers of the 17th century did not pay much 
attention to Birds, and nothing is recorded by our author 
concerning the Avifauna of Ecuador until Sclater's publican 
tion in 1854 of an essay on the Birds of the province of 
Quixos. This was quickly followed by a series of papers 
on the birds of Ecuador collected by Louis Fraser, under 
Sclater’s instructions and at his expense ; Buckley, Stubel 
and Wolf, Jelski, Stolzmann, Rosenberg, and Goodfellow 
followed Fraser's steps, and were so successful that we find 
only one species (Philydor columbianus ) described as new to 
science in the present memoir. 
There are no collectors' notes given by M. Menegaux, nor 
are the exact localities of the specimens brought home always 
stated. But the memoir will be useful to those who are 
studying the Bird-life of the adjoining republics, and would 
have been still more useful if it had been accompanied by 
a map. 
Four coloured plates represent Tinamus latifrons, Odonto- 
phorus melanonotus , Grallaria gigantea , and Philydor columbi¬ 
anus riveti; and a useful list of previous writings on the 
Birds of Ecuador is given. 
