THE OSPEEY. 



79 



church and perceived cages depending' from the 

 roof they were surprised. The birds themselves 

 appeared to be frightened until the organ 

 sounded. Then they appeared to take confi- 

 dence, and before the first few notes of the 

 prelude had been rendered one of the Canaries 

 burst into song. Another took it up almost in- 

 stantly, and then another and another, until all 

 the birds were singing. 



After that, during t lie entire service, sermon 

 and all. the birds kept the chinch tilled with 

 their music the Mocking Birds, with their 

 stronger voices, doing particularly well. Mem- 

 bers of the church are now discussing the advi- 

 sability of continuing the birds as a regular 

 feature.— Atlanta Paper. 



The Birds of North and Middle America 

 by Mr. Ridgway is now being rapidly set up by 

 the printers of the Government Printing Office, 

 and the first part will be ready for publication 

 early in the .summer. The full title will be as 

 follows: 



TheBirds of North and Middle America: a 

 descriptive catalogue of the higher groups, 

 genera, species, and subspecies of birds know n 

 to occur in North America, from the | Arctic 

 Lands to the Isthmus of Panama the West 

 Indies and other islands of the Caribbean Sea. 

 and the Galapagos Archipelago. By Robert 

 Ridgwav. Curator. Division of Birds. Part 



I. | Fringillidae. | Washington: I G. P. O. 1901. 



The proposed scope of the work is given in 

 a long preface from which we extract enough to 

 satisfy in part the curiosity of the readers of the 



OSPKKY. 



"Although preparations for the present work 

 have been more or less actively conducted for 

 some twenty years past, as time and opportunity 

 permitted, the actual work of putting together 

 tlie vast amount of material accumulated during 

 that period was not begun until September. 1894, 

 when the author was directed by Dr. (i. Brown 

 Goode, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, in charge of the National Museum. 

 to consider of paramount importance among his 

 official duties the task of "making available, 

 through publication, the results of the ornitho- 

 logical work of the Government, as represented 

 in the collections of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion." The labor of collating references per- 

 taining to more than 3,000 species of birds, veri- 

 fying citations of original descriptions, measur- 

 ing many thousands of specimens, and other 

 time-consuming details connected with the pre- 

 paration of such a work has necessarily delayed 

 tie beginning- of its publication; but most of 

 tiis drudgery having been disposed of. it is 

 hoped that future progress may be more rapid. 



"In the following pages the attempt is made 

 to describe every species and subspecies, or defi- 

 nable form, of bird found on the continent of 

 North America, from the arctic districts to the 

 eastern end of the Isthmus of Panama, together 

 with those of the West Indies and other islands 

 of the Caribbean Sea (except Trinidad and 

 Tobago), and the Galapagos Archipelago; intro- 

 duced, and naturalized species being included 

 as well as accidental or casual visitors. 



"The classification presented is essentially 

 that of the most recent and advanced author- 

 ities, with such minor modifications as in the 

 judgment of the present author seems desirable. 

 The imperfection of our knowledge concerning 

 the internal structure of many groups of birds, 

 however, makes an entirely satisfactory classi- 

 fication impossible at the present time, and that 

 here adopted must therefore he considered as 

 provisional only. An entirely sound classifica- 

 tion of the birds is a matter of the future, re- 

 quiring vastly extended investigations in the 

 field of avian anatomy and the expenditure of 

 an enormous amount of time and labor in elabo- 

 rating the results. 



"Some effort has been made to establish the 

 proper terminology of the higher groups, no 

 fixed rule having- been followed in this respect, 

 and the law of priority, so rigidly applied to 

 genera and species, quite generally ignored. 

 The synonymy of those higher groups, as given, 

 is by no means complete, however, but little 

 time being available for its compilation. 



"The matter of determining- the limits of 

 families and genera among birds is one of great 

 difficulty, especially among the Passeres: partly 

 because such groups a re often not clearly defined, 

 but also because the material necessary for de- 

 termining such questions is not always avail- 

 able. The question of what constitutes a 

 "family" or a "genus" being involved, and, 

 moreover, one concerning which there is much 

 difference of opinion among systematists, the 

 author's views may be stated, in order to make 

 clear the principles which have been his guide 

 in the present work. 



"Accepting- evolution as an established fact — 

 and it is difficult to understand how anyone 

 who has studied the subject seriously can by 

 any possibility believe otherwise there are no 

 "hard and fast lines." no yaps, or "missing 

 links" in the chain of existing animal forms 

 except as they are caused by the extinction of 

 certain intermediate types; therefore, there can 

 be no such group as a family or genus (nor any 

 other for that matter) unless it is cut off from 

 "tlier groups by the existence of such a gap; 

 because unless thus isolated it can not be defined, 

 and therefore has no existence in fact. These 

 gaps being very unequally distributed, it neces- 

 sarily follows that the groups thus formed are 

 very unequal in value: sometimes alternate 

 links in the chain may be missing; again, 

 several in continuous sequence are gone, while 

 occasionally a series of several or even numer- 

 ous links may be intact. It thus happens that 

 family or generic groups seem very natural or 

 homogeneous, because the range of generic or 

 specific variation is not great and there is no 

 near approach to the characters of another co- 

 ordinate group, while others seem very artificial 

 or heterogenous because among the many 

 generic or specific forms none seem to have 

 dropped out. and therefore, however great the 

 range of variation in structural details, no divi- 

 sion into trenchant groups is practicable — not 

 because extreme division would result, but sim- 

 ply because there can be no proper definition of 

 groups which do not exist. In short, no group, 

 whether of generic, family, or higher rank, can 



