1920 J Recent Literature. 469 



RECENT LITERATURE. 



Mathews' Check List of the Birds of Australia, Part I.' 1 — Having 

 reached the half-way point in his great work on the birds of Australia, 

 Mr. Mathews publishes a list of all the species so far treated, with the 

 synoymy of each and references to his own plates and those of Gould. 

 He explains that while the work was in progress so many questions relat- 

 ing to the proper names for the various species were under discussion, 

 that the names used on the plates are in many cases not those that he would 

 use today. Hence the need of a list of present day names with the proper 

 concordance. 



As Mr. Mathews' work progressed there has been noticeable a con- 

 stantly lessening degree of importance attached to the subspecies, until 

 now they have reached a condition of degradation that will delight the 

 hearts of certain of his Australian friends who for some years past have been 

 complaining of the tremendous increase in the number of "kinds" of birds 

 that he has named. Mr. Mathews explains that "the number of subspecies 

 accepted must always be a variable one, according to the material avail- 

 able and to a certain extent upon the personal idiosyncrasy of the worker, ' ' 

 and therefore he thinks that a list of the species only, with the subspecies 

 arranged under them will be of more general use. As a matter of fact 

 he lists the subspecies along with synonyms etc., so that it is absolutely 

 impossible to tell from the list how many he intends to recognize. Some 

 are in binomial form, others in trinomial and some of each class he accepts 

 while others he rejects. Never the less this list, as he says, will probably 

 be of more general use than any of its predecessors. 



A very valuable feature is the determination of the exact date of publi- 

 cation of each name as nearly as it is possible to ascertain it, as well as 

 the place and method of the type fixation of each genus. 



In the preface Mr. Mathews has a brief defence of his attitude on 

 generic subdivision in which he claims not to be an extreme splitter. 

 His comparison with the work of the B. O. U. Committee does not 

 seem to us very well taken and the fact that of the 279 genera that he 

 considers are necessary for the 334 species listed, he has had to establish 

 at least sixty that were not deemed necessary by any writers up to the time 

 of the 'British Museum Catalogue' — and sometime after — seems to stamp 

 him as rather an extremist in the matter of generic division. Mr. Mathews 

 certainly shows commendable perseverance in his efforts to make his 

 generic division consistent but the point is that a large majority of scien- 

 tific workers do not concede the necessity for such effort when our nomen- 



1 Supplement No. 1. The Birds of Australia. By Gregory M. Mathews. 

 Check-List of the Birds of Australia, Part I. Orders Casuariiformes to Menuri- 

 formes. London: Witherby & Co., 326 High Holborn, W. C. I. February 16, 

 1920, pp. 1-116. 



