JOURNAL Ol' MAINE ORNITIIOLOGIC A r, S()CI1<;TV. 23 



liable to anyone who would know of the advances made in ornithol- 

 ogy in recent years, more especially in the line of the life history of 

 the birds. 



The "Handbook" named above is not only deservedly popular 

 and well-nigh indispensable to the bird student, but, in arrange- 

 ment, scope and adaptability to field work, is a model for handbooks 

 in any department of nature study. 



This latest volume, "Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist," 

 is in many respects a great advance over the others, and is almost 

 certainly the most delightful of all. Its very appearance is a delight. 

 The paper and type are of quite unusual excellence, and the pic- 

 tures, both in presentation and in the unique and interesting sub- 

 jects, from the standpoint of the bird student, are unequalled. It is 

 difficult to take one's attention from them to the text. The author's 

 photographs of the "Golden Eagle's Nest," for grandeur, "Little 

 Blue Herons," for wildness, the Flamingo groups and "White Pel- 

 icans — Saskatchawan," as studies of birds in masses (to take only 

 these few illustrations almost at random) teach more than many 

 pages of writing. • 



And the story accompanying the pictures could hardly be better 

 told. The author is an enthusiast, albeit a sane one. For seveu 

 years he has "devoted the nesting season of the birds to collecting 

 specimens and making field studies and photographs on which to 

 base a series of what has been termed 'Habitat Groups' of North 

 American Birds for the American Museum of Natural History," it 

 being his purpose "to illustrate not only the habits and haunts of 

 the birds shown, but also the country in which they live." To do 

 such a work adequately required not only a fullness of knowledge 

 and experience, and faithfulness to detail, but made it necessary for 

 the author to go into the wildest and most remote parts of the coun- 

 try. His studies of the American Egret in the cypress swamps of 

 the South, of Pelican Island on the Florida coast, the Flamingo 

 colonies of the Bahamas, the Prairie Hen of the plains of Nebraska, 

 the Murres of the F'arallones and the Ptarmigans of the Canadian 



