47 Recent Literature. [.July 



clature is, by the process, rendered meaningless except to the favored 

 few. The reviewer has already expressed at length his view that the 

 groups demanded by consistency or for phylogenetic purposes can just 

 as well be expressed as subgenera without making a plaything of our 

 nomenclature. (Science, April 20, 1920, p. 427.) Generic subdivision 

 seems to us, to quote Mr. Mathews' expression, even more a matter of 

 "personal idiosyncrasy" than the coining of subspecies. We are all 

 agreed with Mr. Mathews on the importance of recognizing differences 

 (and resemblances too!) but it should and can be done without incon- 

 veniencing everyone else. As the instructions to the binder suggest the 

 binding of this "Part" at the end of Volume VII we infer that "Part 2" 

 will not appear until the work is entirely completed, by which time let us 

 hope that our good friend the author will have adopted the same con- 

 servative stand upon genera that he has now reached in regard to sub- 

 species. — W. S. 



Mathews' 'Birds of Australia'. 1 — Part I of Volume VIII appeared on 

 May 5, 1920, and in it Mr. Mathews begins the treatment of the long list 

 of passerine birds. The Pittidae, Atrichornithidae and Hirundinidae are 

 completed in this number and the first species of the Muscicapidae are 

 considered. 



A rather lengthy discussion of the classification of the Passeriformes 

 begins the number which is well worth careful reading. While the author 

 does not advance any new ideas in the classification which he adopts, he 

 presents some rather caustic criticism of characters used and diagnoses of 

 groups, presented by others. His principal grievance seems to be with 

 the importance accorded to anatomical characters and after quoting a 

 diagnosis of the family Picidae: "Feet zygodactyle; after-shaft small or 

 elementary; oil-gland tufted. Muscle formula of leg, AXY (AX); gall 

 bladder elongated; skull without basipterygoid processes," he says: "Surely 

 it is time to provide some more reasonable kind of guide to bird study 

 than such inadequate terminology," and again in referring to anatomical 

 terms he says that they "mean little or nothing to the ornithologist who 

 has to deal with skins and not much more to anyone else." 



While we are willing to admit Mr. Mathews' contention that too much 

 weight may have been given to certain anatomical characters and that 

 even the structure of the syrinx in the Pittidae may not necessarily indi- 

 cate any close relationship to Neotropical groups with similar structure, 

 but may merely indicate degeneration in both instances from "oscinine" 

 types; there is still no reason why they may not have come from the same 

 stock and represent isolated groups of a widespread type now approaching 

 extinction. Mr. Mathews does not think, moreover, that similarity in 

 syrinx structure should be held to unite such dissimilar-looking birds as the 



lr The Birds of Australia, Witherly & Co. Vol. VIII. Part 1, May 5, 1920. 



