88 



THE OSPREY, 



"Oh. you've yot hiild of that thin<f for teach- 

 ing- a fellow to form names O. K. from Greek 

 and Latin — soin^ to give it to me when you get 

 throu.gh with it, ain't you"? .said the Kid. care- 

 lessly. 



"Nav, not sci." answered the Aired Sire; "the 



Bible teaches us to remember the poor and 

 needy, whom we have with us always. I shall 

 .send these u.seful instructions to the Committee 

 on Classification and Nomenclature of the 

 American C)rnithologists' Union." 



Letter Box. 



A GREAT WORK PROPOSED. 



Washington, D. C, Jaii/iary il. IS'-n. 

 EiiiToK OK The OsprEy: 



I have the pleasure of laying' before vour 

 readers the following- 



SUGGS;STIONS FOR A NEW HISTORY OF NOKTH 

 .^MERICiN BIRDS. 



OUR PKEDECESSORS. 



Only three more or less complete works have 

 been published, giving the external characteris- 

 tics in connection with the biographies of the 

 birds inhabiting- the regions which constituted 

 tlie United States for the time being. Those 

 three, it need only be added for form's sake, are 

 (1) WiLson's (with Ord's and Bonaparte's contin- 

 uations). (2) Audubon's, and (3) Baird. Brewer 

 and Ridgway's. The numerous other works on 

 American Ornithology are more or less re- 

 stricted in .scope, covering only portions of the 

 territory, never completed, superficial compila- 

 tions, mostly confined to the exhibition of 

 structural characters, or monographic of limited 

 groups. 



Some may think (and do think) that Nuttall's 

 "Manual of the C)rnithology of the United States 

 and Canada", published in 1832-34. should be in- 

 cluded in the same category as the works of Wil- 

 son, Audubon, and Baird, Brewer and Ridgway. 

 I have inclined to that opinion myself, inasmuch 

 as the whole territory was covered by Nuttall, 

 both systematically and biog'raphicaily. This 

 mention, however, may suffice for the pre.sent. 



Of course this enumeration only includes bio- 

 graphical ornithographies covering, in intention 

 at least, the whole area of the United States. 

 Consequently no mention is in order of mere 

 descriptive works. The two most recent ones, 

 however, will be very useful in connection with 

 the new work contemplated. Those a're Dr. 

 Coues' Key to North American Birds (1872-97). 

 and Mr. Ridg-way's Manual of North Ameri- 

 can Birds (1887-971. Both are excellent and the 

 full descriptions of the Key are the best of their 

 kind. Nor do I forg-et the numerous volumes 

 descriptive of birds of limited faunal areas, en- 

 riched as many of them are by valuable bi- 

 ographies. I have looked upon one of those vol- 

 umes — The Birds of the Northwest, by the prin- 

 cipal editor of The Osprey — as a model for the 

 biographical treatment of the members of the 

 class, and its excellence has suggested that un- 

 der the same auspices a more g-eneral work could 

 be prosecuted with succes.s. 



DEFICIENCIES. 



The great general works that have been men- 

 tioned are worthy of much, if not all, praise, but 

 nevertheless they are all and each deficient in 



.some respect or other, and the earliest, from a 

 scientific point of view, have become long' ob- 

 solete. 



Both Wilson's and Audubon's orig-inal works 

 observed no classification and were merely uncon- 

 nected descriptions and biographies of species 

 without anj' logical sequence and only follow- 

 ing, one after the other, according to the con- 

 venience or whim of the authors. Neither work 

 had more than the names of the genera, if so 

 much as that. No further comment need be 

 made. 



The work of Baird. Brewer and Ridgway is 

 still a standard and may be (and is) advantage- 

 ously used for identification of specimens, for 

 concise and definite information as to diagnostic 

 characteristics, and as a -store-house of data con- 

 cerning the habits of many species. 



A NEW WORK TIMELY. 



A ipiarter of a centmw has intervened between 

 the publication of the three volumes treating of 

 land birds and the present time. That quarter 

 century has been more fruitful in observers and 

 describers than the preceding- three quarters, 

 and the time is ripe now for the commencement 

 of a new work on North American birds. The 

 time that has elapsed is even in years more 

 than intervened between the first two of the 

 g-reat works. Wilson's "American Ornithology" 

 was c<mimenced in 1808 and terminated (but not 

 completed) in 1814. Seventeen years passed and 

 a new work was begun. Audubon's "Ornithol- 

 ogical Biograph3'" was eight j-ears in publish- 

 ing — 1831 to 1839. Numerous works were pub- 

 lished afterward, but did not cover the whole 

 tield and more than a third of a century passed 

 before one witli equal scope was given to the 

 world. Baird, Brewer and Ridg'way's "History 

 of North American Birds," covering all the land 

 birds, appeared in three volumes in 1874. The 

 two volumes on water birds, however, were not 

 issued till September. 1884, .some months after 

 the appearance of Coues' Key in its enlarged 

 second edition. 



But althoug-h less time has passed since the 

 last work appeared than intervened between it 

 and Audubon's, more work- vastly more— has 

 appeared than between the preceding epochs. 

 I repeat, then, the time has come to commence 

 another ornithology, to gather the harvest scat- 

 tered in many fields, to bring it together in a new 

 granary. A very decided improvement, too, can 

 be effected, it seems to me, in the treatment of 

 the life histories of the beings to which we are 

 devoted. 



As already indicated, Wilson's and Audubon's 

 orig-inal volumes were composed only of incon- 

 sequential series of descriptions of species with 



