Recently published Ornithological Works. 38/ 
Views and Romanes’s Views and those of their Followers. By Alexander 
H. Japp, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 8vo. London, 1899.] 
The title sufficiently explains the aim of this preposterous 
work, in which we are assured, with irritating iteration, that 
Darwin tc was not a thinker.” Gould, too, “ was no thinker, 
and was mostly either very weak or very far wrong when he 
attempted anything outside his proper province.” Inaccurate 
and garbled “ quotations ” abound, and the ‘ Zoologist ’ for 
1883 will he searched in vain for anything like the assertions 
ascribed to Mr. Bidwell on p. 51 ; while absolute misstate¬ 
ments are sadly frequent. References to p. 10 and p. 31 
would lead the reader to suppose that the male Cuckoo 
“ deposits”—if he does not actually lay — <f his eggs in other 
birds’ nests.” The index is worthy of the rest of the book, 
and to say more about the whole production would be a 
waste of our space. 
50. Le Souef on Birds from North Australia. 
[Ornithological Notes from the Northern Territory. A List of the 
Birds, with the Nests and Eggs, obtained by Mr. E. Olive on the 
Katherine River. By D. Le Souef, C.M.Z.S. Victorian Nat. xvi. 
no. 4.] 
Mr. Le Souef writes useful remarks on the more important 
birds obtained by Mr. E. Olive while collecting on the 
Katherine River, Northern Territory, from October 1898 to 
January 1899. The collector’s field-notes are appended, and 
the nests and eggs are described. 
51. Martorelli on the Pattern of the Plumage of Birds. 
[Le Forme e le Simmetrie delle Macchie nel Piumaggio. Memoria 
Ornitologica del Prof. Giacinto Martorelli. Mem. Soc. Ital. Sci. Nat. vi. 
fasc. 2, 1898.] 
Only an ornithologist who is conversant with all the 
niceties of the Italian language can do justice to this recon¬ 
dite treatise; and in the hope of obtaining the assistance 
of one thus qualified we have delayed our notice for a 
twelvemonth, but in vain. The author’s conclusions are 22 
in number; the first being that the spots or markings on 
