162 Recent Literature. [jan. 



Scoville's ' The Out-of-Doors Club.' x — To readers of ' The Atlantic 

 Monthly ' Mr. Scoville is well known as one who is making the environs 

 of Philadelphia as famous a region for the nature lover as those of Boston 

 and Cambridge have long been, thanks to the larger numbers of writers on 

 outdoor life who seem always to have lived there. The present little 

 volume describes many trips afield in which the writer instructs his children 

 in the wonders of the great out doors. It is impossible to imagine a child, — 

 or a grown-up for that matter, — ■ who will not be attracted by the experi- 

 ences of the " Band." Birds, mammals, reptiles, plants and camp-lore 

 all come in for their share of attention and the wanderings lead across the 

 Delaware to the author's cabin in the New Jersey pines and even to the 

 remote " plains " in the central part of that State where the famous dwarf 

 forests of pine and oak cover many acres, a region which has probably never, 

 before been described in popular writings. 



The suggestion that the unidentified peepings that one of the children 

 heard here might have come from a brood of young Heath Hens is hardly 

 to be taken seriously. It is an attractive way, perhaps, to introduce the 

 fact that the birds did once occur here but the region has been too carefully 

 explored by hunters and ornithologists to make such an occurrence at all 

 likely, and if the author really considered it probable the fact is deserving 

 of more serious record elsewhere. The more likely possibility of young 

 Ruffed Grouse is not mentioned! In referring to the peculiar Conrad's 

 Crowberry which finds on the " plains " its southernmost limit we notice 

 that the name of this early botanist is misspelled. 



Little books like Mr. Scoville's add greatly to the interest in outdoor life 

 and vastly increase the army of nature lovers who in turn become staunch 

 protectors of the birds and wild flowers and out of whose ranks eventually 

 come a smaller number of real ornithologists and botanists. He who, by 

 his writings, starts such a process of evolution is deserving of all praise. 

 Several of Mr. Scoville's fellow members of the Delaware Valley Ornitho- 

 logical Club have contributed photographs which add to the attractiveness 

 of his little volume. — W. S. 



Gilford's ' Field Notes on the Land Birds of the Galapagos 

 Islands.' - — In 1913, Mr. Gifford, one of the naturalists on the California 

 Academy's Galapagos expedition, published an account of the water- 

 birds and the doves obtained by the party. Having been subsequently 

 occupied with anthropological work he has been unable to complete his 

 report and now presents his ornithological field notes in order that they 



1 The Out-of-Doors Club. By Samuel Scoville, Jr. Philadelphia, 1919. The Sunday 

 School Times Company. 12 mo. pp. 1-171. 



2 Expedition of the California Academy of Sciences to the Galapagos Islands, 1905-1906. 

 XIII. Field Notes on the Land Birds of the Galapagos Islands and of Cocos Island, 

 Costa Bica. Proc. Calif. Acad. Sciences. Fourth series. Vol. II, Pt. II, No. 13, pp. 

 189-258. pp. 189-25S. June 16, 1919. 



