250 Recent Literature. [.April 



' California Fish and Game ' for January tells of the successful use of 

 bombs and fireworks in frightening migrant birds from the rice fields and 

 has an admirable article on the value of wild birds by Mr. J. G. Tyler. 



The ' Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey ' of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture contains brief mention of investigations 

 as to the food habits of the Starling which indicate that this bird has some 

 desirable qualities and is not all bad. The question remains however, 

 whether in spite of his destruction of ground insects he is not from shear 

 force of numbers crowding out of existence many of our native species in 

 areas inhabited by him. Another pamphlet issued by the Biological Sur- 

 vey ' How to Attract Birds in the East Central States ' is by W. L. McAtee 

 and is similar to those already published for other sections of the country. 

 The 'Audubon Bulletin ' of the Illinois Audubon Society for the winter 

 of 1917-1918 and the ' Seventh Annual Report of the New Jersey Audubon 

 Society ' are full of interesting matter concerning bird protection and bird 

 study in these states and the former has an anonymous biographical sketch, 

 with portrait, of Mr. Robert Ridgway, which will be read with great 

 pleasure by everyone interested in the development of ornithology in 

 America. 



' Current Items of Interest ' prepared by Mr. Henry Oldys contains 

 an account of a Sparrow campaign at Davenport, Iowa, which seems to 

 have been more successful than the English one already mentioned. 



Cornell University has issued a circular announcing courses of instruction 

 on wild life conservation and game breeding during 1918, while from the 

 National Association of Audubon Societies come some attractive ' Audubon 

 Pocket Bird Collections ' — clever colored drawings by E. J. Sawyer of 

 mounted specimens, represented as in a case with a ' catalogue ' on the 

 back arranged by Dr. Frank M. Chapman. 



The ' Report of the National Zoological Park ' contains an interesting 

 note on the park as a bird sanctuary and a list of some 180 species of birds 

 now living in the collection. — W. S. 



Swarth on Jays of the Genus Aphelocoma. 1 — The much discussed 

 California Jays are again reviewed in this paper with the result that Aphelo- 

 coma c. obscura of the A. O. U. ' Check-List ' is found to be identical with 

 typical A. calif ornica from Monterey but the bird of interior California 

 generally supposed to be calif ornica is different and is the same as A. c. 

 immanis, described from Linn Co., Oregon, by Dr. Joseph Grinnell. All 

 this seems to hinge upon the question as to which of two forms a type from 

 somewhat intermediate territory belongs, and we have no doubt Mr. 

 Swarth's deductions are correct. We would therefore be still in accord with 

 the ' Check-List ' so far as the number of races of A. calif ornica is con- 

 cerned were it not for the fact that Mr. Swarth comes to the conclusion 



1 The Pacific Coast Jays of the Genus Aphelocoma. By H. S. Swarth. University of 

 California Publ. in Zool., Vol. 17, pp. 405^22. February 23, 1918. 



