THE OSPREY. 



47 



The Blackthroated green warbler, if not quite 

 as exquisitely trim as his cousin, is, neverthe- 

 less, a very pretty fellow. His black upper vest 

 extends further down over his breast, and his 

 upper coat is green. A bright yellow line over 

 each eye leads a sprightly expression of counte- 

 nance, and he is fairly abundant and sociable. 

 He also ling^ers into October, and both of these 

 blackthroated little birds have probably been 

 summering- across the Canadian border, though 

 they may have stopped a little way on this 

 side. 



Thedelicate beauty of the chestnut sided war- 

 bler is quite as pleasing" to the eyes as the more 

 g^orgeous coat of the Blackburnian. He may be 

 seen throughout September, and is easily recog- 

 nized by his bright yellow crown and the fine 

 chestnut coloring" of his sides, which contrasts 

 delightfully with his pure white breast. His 

 upper coat is streaked in black and olive green. 



These are only a few varieties of one of the 

 bird families which are now making" ready to 

 wing their way southward. F'locks of robins 

 feed in the freshly mown fields, and the delici- 

 ous hue of the blue bird flashes again between 

 earth and sky. The kinglets, the fox sparrow 

 and the white-throated sparrow, and many other 

 bird travelers pav us a fall visit on their wav 

 south.— The Sun,'N. Y. 



Portraits of Twenty-fivk Founders of 

 THE American Ornithologists' Union (1883) 

 have been artisticalU' grouped in a plate pub- 

 lished as the frontispiece of Bird Lore for 

 October. 



A Monument to Johannb;s Muli.er, the 

 great German Anatomist, who revolutionized 

 the classification of the passerine birds by his 



recognition of the taxonomic value of the singing 

 muscles of the oscine or singing birds, was un- 

 veiled at Coblentz on the 27th of October. 



The Death of John Cokdeaux of Lincoln- 

 shire, England, took place on the 6th of 

 August. He was a voluminous writer on Eng- 

 lish birds and took special interest in the inves- 

 tigation of the migration of birds. He was 

 born in 1831. 



The Death of Dk. Kaki, Beknharu Bkuhi. 

 on the 14th of August has been recorded. Dr. 

 liriihl was 80 years of age. He was formerly 

 Professor of Zootomy in the University of 

 Vienna. 



The Death of Dr. Kari, Russ, a German 

 Ornithologist, occurred in Berlin, in the 67th 

 year of his age, on the 29th of September. 



The Death of Dr. Edward Orton will be 

 reg-retted by manj' who had the pleasure of 

 seeing him in August at the meeting of the 

 American Association for the advancement of 

 science of which he was president. Though 

 apparently in normal health then, he did not 

 live more than two months after the meeting, 

 having- died October 16th. 



The Death of Grant Allen occurred on the 

 25th of October. Mr. Allen was known to mo.st 

 people as a popular writer and novelist, but he 

 started out in life with a strong scientific bias 

 and wrote many articles and several books on 

 biological subjects (including ornithology) and 

 especially from an evolutionary standpoint. 

 He was born in Kingston, Canada, in 1848. 



Literature. 



A Hand-list of the Genera and Spf;cies of 

 Birds. [Nomenclator Avium tum fossilium tum 

 viventium.] By R. Bowdler Sharpe, L. L. D., 

 Assistant Keeper, Department of Zoology, 

 British Museum. Volume I, London: Printed 

 by order of the trustees, etc., etc., 1899. [8vo. 

 pp. i-xxi, 1-303] . 



The first volume of the new "Hand-list of 

 Birds" (see Osprey, iii, 112) has made its ap- 

 pearance, having been published about Septem- 

 ber 1. It is based on the twenty-seven volumes 

 of the British Museum Catalogue of Birds, in- 

 cluding those species described since the publi, 

 cation of the successive volumes of that series- 

 to which are added all fossil species known to 

 the author. The classification employed is in 

 the main that proposed by Dr. Sharpe in 1891 

 (Review of Recent Attempts to Classify Birds), 

 with some changes of order and family names, 

 interpolation of fossil orders, families, etc., sup- 

 pression of numerous suborders, and transposi- 

 tion of some families within orders. 



The new work is made up much on the order 

 of the old Gray's Hand-list, with the addition of 

 fossil forms, which, with extinct species, are in- 

 dicated b3' antique tj'pe. The species and genera 

 are not numbered consecutively throughout, as 

 in Gra3''s work, and no subspecies or subgenera 

 are recognized; indeed, there is little room for 



subgenera in this work, for Dr. Sharpe is a 

 g-eneric "splitter" of the first magnitude. 



Gray's work, including an index to the genera 

 and species, occupies three volumes, and was 

 completed in as many years. The new Hand- 

 list, which is destined to be of daiU' use to orni- 

 thologists for years to come, will probably re- 

 quire five volumes for its completion, and it is 

 to be hoped no time will be lost in bringing it to 

 a speed)' termination. 



It is too early to make an estimate on the total 

 increase in species since Gray's time, and a 

 comparison of this sort is, for several reasons, 

 practically impossible. A glance at some of the 

 larger families, however, shows the following: 

 of the diurnal birds of prey (exclusive of fossil 

 forms) Dr. Sharpe recognizes 515 species (of 81 

 genera), while Gray's list contains only 379 

 species (of 46 genera, and 67subgejiera); of Ovvls, 

 Gray lists 206 species (11 genera, and 43 sub- 

 genera), Sharpe. 316 species (30 genera); of 

 Herons Sharpe has 108 species (35 genera. Gray, 

 82 species (5 g^enera, 22 subgenera); of the Duck 

 tribe, we find 192 species (3b genera, 37 sub- 

 genera) in Gray, and 207 species (71 g"enera) in 

 Sharpe. 



The first volume of Dr. Sharpe's work, from 

 the Archcropteryx through the Owls, contains 3 

 subclasses, 32 orders (of which 6 are fossil), 28 



