iSS6.] Recent Literature. J.03 



[It is a matter of surprise and regret to me that any portion of mj re- 

 marks, above referred to, should be construed b^' Dr. Cooper as being 

 either " discourteous" or "almost personal." They were certainly not 

 so intended, and upon again carefully reading both Dr. Cooper's 'Cor- 

 rections,' and my 'Rectifications' I am unable to find anything in the lat- 

 ter justifying such construction. 



In taking cognizance of Dr. Cooper's article, I exercised merely the 

 privilege of an author to defend his writings against adverse criticism, 

 and in the present case it was my duty, as well as privilege, to do so, in 

 order that the interested portion of the public might have the other side 

 of the " points in dispute." The points under discussion are not so much 

 matters of personal concern as they are questions of facts; and the circum- 

 stance that exactly one-half of the thirty items given by Dr. Cooper under 

 the indiscriminating title of 'Corrections' relate merely to typographical 

 errors, many of them so obvious that no correction is necessarv, while 

 of the remaining fifteen more than half constitute, as he himself states, 

 items of "additional information," will, I think, justify my use of the term 

 "so-called" in connection with them — a characterization the more neces- 

 sary since Dr. Cooper expressly says, in his introductory remarks, that 

 "the following corrections .... relate chiefly to quotations from my [his] 

 own writings," which, in point of fact, as shown above, they do not do. 



Dr. Cooper himself, in the above, 'rectifies' his 'so-called correction' 

 regarding the breeding oi Mareca americana by explaining that he meant 

 AytJiya americana. In regard to this species, I would also refer him to 

 'Ornithology of the Fortieth Parallel' (p. 625), where it is stated that "in 

 June, either this species \_^A. vallisneria^ or the Red-head was very abun- 

 dant in the tule sloughs in the vicinity of Sacramento, where they were 

 undoubtedly breeding." I have since had reason to consider the species 

 as being beyond question A. americana., and not A. vallisueria. 



Respecting the overburdening of the synonymy of "most of the Longi- 

 pennes and Tubinares," for which Dr. Cooper suggest a remedy, a con- 

 siderable "lumping together" of allied forms, it must be stated that the 

 unfortunate condition which others, no less than Dr. Cooper, deplore is 

 chargeable much less to those who draw fine distinctions (or, more prop- 

 erly, who are scientifically accurate), than to those who ignore distinctions 

 which really exist, who have made erronous identifications, and who have 

 given new names to species already named without being aware of the 

 fact. In short, to any one who will take the trouble to look up the history 

 of the synonyms of almost any species thus burdened, it will become very 

 evident that they owe their existence to very many circumstances over 

 which the so-called 'hair-splitter' has no control, and for which he is in 

 no way responsible. 



The suggestion that certain dark colored Piiffini " may be dichromatic 

 forms " of other white-bellied species, is not new, having been made at 

 least a year ago. Speaking of dichromatism among the Herons, Dr. 

 Leonhard Stejneger, iij ' Standard Natural History,' Vol. IV, p. 7 (18S5), 

 says : "The example from the herons can be nearly duplicated by the status 



