necessary to the handling of the halftone illus- 

 trations. ^The printing of both the colored 

 and nncolored pictures in all the copies we 

 have seen has been done with pronounced suc- 

 cess. The color drawings by Fuertes are ad- 

 mirable and we are astonished at the success 

 with which this noted bird artist was able to 

 turn to mammals, the drawings of which in 

 this contribution mark as far as we know his 

 first efforts in the new field. 



A critical reviewer might succeed in finding 

 a nimiber of small points to elaborate upon 

 and of which to complain. For instance: It 

 is trite to say that an Alaska brown bear is no 

 more an animal than is a house fly. Yet here we 

 have the title, " Wild Animals of North Amer- 

 ica," though there is an evident effort made in 

 the subtitle to remedy the matter by using the 

 expression, " mammal kingdom." But here a 

 taxonomic blunder is tumbled into! We can 

 hardly believe that Nelson himself had any- 

 thing final to say with regard to the title page 

 of this book, but that the editor of the Na- 

 tional Geographic Magazine got in his work 

 here in the belief so characteristic of editors 

 of popular magazines that their public must 

 be talked down to. 



But to , pin the attention of the reader of 

 this review upon such really minute defects 

 would do violence to the facts in the case, 

 which are that, according to the convictions 

 of the reviewer, Nelson's " Wild Animals of 

 North America " is more uniformly accurate 

 and at the same time replete with information 

 along many lines than any preceding book on 

 American mammals. And even more, it may 

 be declared with confidence that this book is 

 by far the most important contribution of a 

 non-systematic nature that has appeared in its 

 field in America. 



Joseph Grinnell 



Museum of Vertebkate Zoology, 

 University of Califohnia 



