270 Notes and News. [ April 



men interested in recording bird migration data, it has aimed to recruit its 

 members so far as possible from those of high school and college age and to 

 encourage the active participation of young men in all its work. Its field 

 has been broad and discussion on any phase of ornithology is welcome, 

 while the spirit of good fellowship which has always characterized its 

 meetings has been carefully preserved. 



Twenty-five years make great changes in the development of the mem- 

 bers of any organization, and gathered around the anniversary table on 

 January 7 might be seen doctors and lawyers of eminence, college profes- 

 sors, men high up in business corporations, and officers of banks and trust 

 companies, mingled with the younger members who go to make up the bone 

 and sinews of the Club today — all preserving their interest in bird study, 

 ready to advance it in any way, and no doubt better for the existence of 

 the 'D. V. O. C 



A review of Joseph Grinnell's ' Mammals and Birds of the Lower Colo- 

 rado Valley,' by Francis B. Sumner which appears in 'Science' for January 

 8, 1915, should be read by all who are interested in zoogeography, both for 

 the interesting discussion of some of the points raised in the paper, and as 

 an illustration of how far apart the systematists and experimental biologists 

 stand in their consideration of evolutionary problems. 



Prof. Sumner it should be said is much more lenient to the systematist 

 than many of those who approach the subject from his point of view and 

 who, as some one has put it, look upon systematic work as a disease, like 

 the measles, from which everyone suffers at some time or other but from 

 which one is expected to recover rapidly. Nevertheless some of his state- 

 ments will doubtless astonish readers of ' The Auk ' who have been brought 

 up on zoogeography. For instance he says: " It would seem a priori that 

 in traveling along a uniform gradient from a region of higher to one of lower 

 average temperature or vice-versa, one would continually pass into and 

 out of the ranges of species which found then limits of physiological adapta- 

 bility at different points along the line. One would scarcely expect to 

 encounter critical points, where the fauna and flora as a whole, or at least 

 the most characteristic members of it, were suddenly replaced by quite a 

 different assemblage. Yet this is the essence of the 'life-zone' conception. 



"It would be foolhardy, indeed, for a zoologist of limited field experi- 

 ence to criticize this conception. It is doubtless based upon extensive and 

 accurate observations and represents real facts. But unfortunately they 

 are, in a high degree, facts which, by their very nature, are scarcely com- 

 municable to most biologists. Before the life-zone conception can be of 

 much service to the average student of evolutionary problems it will have 

 to be expressed in terms which he is able to comprehend without making 

 extended explorations, under the personal escort of one of the initiated. 

 Until then such expressions as 'Upper Sonoran,' 'Transition' and the like 

 will be to him mere empty names, or at best, they will recall to his mind 

 certain colored areas, on a map of North America, the boundaries of which 

 seem to have been chosen quite arbitrarily." 



