Recently published Ornithological Works. 683 
will venture to make a few remarks on it, and to say that we 
agree with the author in the main. There can be no doubt 
that geographical forms of widely spread species exist, and 
that they are worthy of careful study. By far the best way 
of designating them is the trinomial system, only that we 
should prefer to call the originally described form a typicus ” 
instead of repeating the specific term : for Merula merula 
merula is really unbearable. But the trinomial plan has 
been discredited amongst many sober and if old-fashioned ,J> 
ornithologists, owing to the light and easy way in which 
some of the novi homines create subspecies without sufficient 
material, sometimes even on a single specimen. As Mr. 
Hartert himself remarks, it requires much more evidence to 
found a good subspecies than a good species. A single 
specimen may be quite sufficient basis for the former, while 
for the latter a large series is necessary. And subspecies 
are, on account of the slighter differences between them, 
much more matters of individual opinion than the better- 
defined species. While, therefore, we admit that subspecies 
must be used in certain cases, we advocate much greater care 
in their institution. 
115. Le Souef s Visit to Western Australia. 
[A Visit to Western Australia. By D. Le Souef. Victorian Natu¬ 
ralist, xvi. p. 185.] 
Mr. Dudley Le Souef sends us a copy of an address to 
the Field Naturalists* Club of Victoria, which contains an 
account of his visit to Western Australia in October 1899, 
and of what he saw—botanical and zoological. Several 
pages are devoted to the birds, which, however, are stated 
not to be numerous except in certain favoured localities. It 
is an error, Mr. Le Souef tells us, to suppose that all the 
Emeus of Western Australia belong to the spotted form 
named Drom&us irroratus. If this be the case, the so-called 
species is (as we have long suspected) probably not even 
a local form or subspecies, but merely a casual variety. 
