148 Recent Literature. [jan. 



general account of habits and " economic status." The English name of 

 the A. O. IT. ' Check-List ' is giyen at the head of the section relating to 

 each species followed by other vernacular names current in the region 

 covered by the work including the French name, and finally the binomial 

 Latin name of the ' Check-List. ' 



The general information presented under the various species is as a rule 

 well selected and covers most of the questions that arise in the minds of 

 bird students seeking information. In the case of the Purple Finch we 

 notice a not unnatural criticism of the name purple as applied to this species 

 which, as Mr. Taverner says, is more of a magenta. Dr. Spencer Trotter 

 however, (' Auk,' 1912, p. 255) has called attention to the fact that it was 

 the famous Tyrian purple after which the bird was named not the violet 

 purple of today. The colored plates by Mr. Frank C. Hennessey are very 

 attractive and the postures of the birds usually good, some of them like the 

 Kinglets rather daring in their originality. Mr. Hennessey evidently stud- 

 ies his birds and his paintings are his own interpretation of what he sees 

 rather than copies of conventional attitudes. We need just such effort 

 in ornithological illustration. 



Having given our hearty approval of Mr. Taverner's book so far as the 

 general reader, is concerned which, after all, is the main point in its pro- 

 duction, we must take exception to his attitude on some minor or more 

 technical points. 



As is well known, he is opposed to the use of subspecies and his effort to 

 dispense with them in his nomenclature and at the same time explain them 

 in a sort of foot note has not been very happy. The non-technical reader, 

 who may be interested in Pine Grosbeaks, for instance, is almost certain to 

 regard the Pine Grosbeak, Pinicola enucleator, which heads the paragraph 

 as a different bird from the Canadian Pine Grosbeak, P. e. leucura, men- 

 tioned in small type at the end. This matter, however, has been thor- 

 oughly discussed elsewhere (' Auk,' 1918, pp. 446-449). In this connection 

 Mr. Taverner constantly makes use of an unfortunate term " type form " 

 when referring the first described race in a group of con-specific forms. 

 This race is of exactly the same rank as any of the others, and this term, 

 the use of which we hoped had died out, is distinctly misleading. The 

 word type, it seems to us had better be restricted to the specimen which 

 was originally described and it remains the same whether the form which it 

 represents becomes a species or a subspecies. Some authors, as Mr. 

 Gregory M. Mathews cite subspecies (i. e. trinomial names) as types of 

 genera and these may or may not happen to be what Mr. Taverner calls 

 the " type form," thus is the matter further complicated. 



Another unfortunate feature of this work is the practice of interpolating 

 generic or group headings at various points throughout the book while 

 adjacent genera or groups are not accorded such distinction. For instance, 

 there is a heading on page 83, " White Herons " and under it we find not 

 only the Egret and the Little Blue Heron but the Green and Black-crowned 

 Night Herons as well. We are supposed to include only the first two but 



