Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/487

Rh facts. On perusing the pages of this new edition, no reflective reader can fail to perceive both the amount of condensed information which it contains, and the many new lines of investigation which it suggests. We can conceive no happier treatment of the subject.

Since our last notice of the work ('Zoologist,' 1877, p. 35) two more parts have appeared, the last, recently issued, making the fourth part of the second volume now in the hands of subscribers. The species therein dealt with are the Rose-coloured Starling, Chough, Raven, Black and Grey Crows, Rook, Daw, and Pie.

In his treatment of the Carrion Crow and the Hooded or Grey Crow, we notice a departure from the usual line adopted by systematists, Prof. Newton considering that these birds "should be regarded as members of a single dimorphic species, and the inability to point out why this species should possess that admittedly exceptional quality is no more an argument against that view than is the inability to explain why a wholly black plumage should prevail in nearly all the species of Corviis, while in a few others the black should be varied by grey or white." We have not space here to review the evidence which is adduced in support of the proposed fusion of what have hitherto been usually regarded as two distinct species. Suffice it to say that Professor Newton, arriving at the conviction that "it is almost impossible for a scientific naturalist to retain the time-honoured belief that they are distinct species," unites them under the heading "Crow," and traces very instructively the geographical distribution of the two forms. His remarks on the " Passeres" and " Picarice" (pp. 266— 268) deserve attentive perusal.

have received from the publishers of this quarterly- journal the volume for 1878, addressed "To the Editor of 'The Zoologist,'" and presumably therefore intended for notice in these pages under the head of "Notices of New Books." Amongst the zoological papers which it contains we may especially refer to that by Mr. Henry Woodward on Armoured Fishes, and on Volvox globator, by Mr. A. W. Bennett. Prof. Martin Duncan's notes on the Ophiurans, or the Sand and Brittle Stars, and