Vol. XVI-I Notes and News. 2 I 7 



1S99 J J 



so completely fills its role is a source of great satisfaction to all bird 

 lovers. The first number has as a frontispiece a flashlight photograph of 

 John Burroughs at ' Slab Sides,' and the first article is ' In Warbler Time,' 

 by this favorite author : Dr. Thomas S. Roberts writes of ' The Camera 

 as an Aid in the Study of Birds,' with four half-tones illustrating the life 

 habits of the Chickadee; 'From a Cabin Window,' by II. W. Menke, is 

 illustrated bv three halftones of winter bird life in Wyoming; Miss Isabel 

 Eaton has a paper on 'Bird Studies for Children.' In the department 

 ' For Young Observers ' Miss Merriam writes of ' Our Doorstep Sparrow' ; 

 'Notes from Field and Study,' contain short illustrated articles; 'Book 

 News and Reviews,' give notices of new bird books, and an 'Audubon 

 Department,' under the editorial charge of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, 

 presents a list of the Audubon Societies, and reports of their work, from 

 the Secretaries of many of them, while similar reports will follow from 

 others. With the usual editorial notes, this forms a well arranged num- 

 ber of 32 large octavo pages, and gives good evidence of its raison d'etre. 



Since our notice of 'The Osprey' in the January Auk, four numbers 

 have appeared, namely, the December, January, February, and March 

 issues, thus bringing the magazine practically up to date as regards pub- 

 lication. Each number contains popular articles on birds by well known 

 ornithologists, and there are various reproductions of bird pictures by 

 Mr. Fuertes. Dr. Gill has a communication in the February number 

 giving ' Suggestions for a New History of North American Birds,' to be 

 published in parts as supplements to 'The Osprey.' After pointing out 

 the deficiencies in preceding works, and the timeliness of a new work, he 

 proceeds to give an outline of how the new ' History ' should be prepared, 

 his hints being quite to the point for what we might term an 'ideal' 

 history. He then considers at considerable length the ' Classification to 

 be adopted,' discussing ' avine orders' and ' oscine families.' He makes 

 the point that there are no orders among birds comparable with those in 

 other classes of Vertebrates. Hesa_ys: " I would scarcely recognize any 

 orders among living birds — certainly not more than two." He proposes 

 that the orders of most ornithologists be designated as suborders, and 

 to give to the present suborders the rank of superfamilies. The fami- 

 lies of 'Oscine birds' he looks upon as being as unsatisfactory as the 

 orders. He claims : " To entitle the sections of Oscines generally called 

 families as such, is to obscure and falsify our knowledge of structure 

 and to give a distorted idea of the group." In contrasting the homo- 

 geneousness of structure in birds with what we may call Ihe laxness of 

 structure in reptiles and fishes, or even in some of the orders of mam- 

 mals, he does not of course set forth any new facts, but merely empha. 

 sizes what is familiar to every specialist in vertebrates. Most taxono- 

 mers give weight to the fact that the compactness and homogeneity met 

 with in birds is necessarily a result of that specialization as egg-laying, 

 flying vertebrates, with which the wide range of structure and adapta- 



