368 Recent Literature. [£{* 



are satisfactory. While in a few instances there is some approach to 

 accuracy, and, as a rule, the coloring is an aid to identification, there are 

 many figures in which the coloring is so misleading as to defy an expert 

 to guess what the figures were intended to represent. This is the more 

 to be regreted since the plan of the book is such that the plates are 

 designed to constitute the ' key.' As said, the figures are grouped on 

 the plates according to size, and hence without regard to natural arrange- 

 ment, while in the text the species are arranged in systematic order, 

 from the Bob-white to the Bluebird, and numbered consecutively. As 

 the same numbers are used on the plates, where their arrangement is 

 heterogeneous, it is an oversight on the part of the author not to cite the 

 plates in the text, and thus save his reader the trouble of hunting 

 through the plates for the desired figure. 



Mr. Knobel divides his birds on the basis of size into the following 

 four categories: i, 'Birds the size of a Crow or larger'; 2, ' Birds the 

 size of a Robin or Jay, etc.'; 3, 'Birds about the size of a House Spar- 

 row'; 4, 'Birds smaller than a House Sparrow'; the third group being 

 further divided into: '«, bright colored; />, without speckles; c, brown 

 with speckles.' We must thus look on plate V for No. 144 and on plate 

 IX for 145, with no clue in the text to guide us in our search for the 

 figures of our two species of Nuthatch. 



The text consists of a short general description of each bird, followed 

 by a varying amount, from two or three lines to half a page, of bio- 

 graphical information, all printed in uniform type, and as a continuous 

 paragraph, with nothing to distinguish typographically the descriptive 

 from the biographical matter. 



The plan of the book is good, but the cheapness of its execution will 

 go far to defeat its excellent purpose. If more care and expense had 

 been devoted to the color printing, and a little more taste had been dis- 

 plaved in the production of the text, the book would doubtless have 

 fully accomplished the author's purpose, and have proved a pleasing as 

 well as useful contribution to the list of popular bird books. — J. A. A. 



Mrs. Miller's 'The First Book of Birds.'— In the present work ' we 

 have a book prepared expressly for children by an author especially well- 

 fitted for the task. "This book," says the author, " is intended to inter- 

 est young people in the ways and habits of birds, and to stimulate them 

 to further study. It has grown out of my experience in talking to 

 schools. From the youngest kindergarten scholar to boys and girls of 

 sixteen and eighteen, I have never failed to find young people intensely 



1 The First Book | of Birds | By Olive Thorne Miller | with eight colored 

 and twelve | plain plates and twenty | figures in the | text | [Monogram] 

 Boston and New York | Houghton, Mifflin and Company | The Riverside 

 Press, Cambridge | 1899— Square i2mo, pp. x -f- 150, pll. 20 (eight colored), 

 and 20 text figures. $1.00. 



