V ° 1 'wi9 XVI ] Recent Literature. 125 



tiously — watched them until they vanished among the uppermost ranks 

 of the dwarf rhododendrons. I stood up stiffened with cold and my long 

 waiting. In the west I saw the last pink tinge die out upon the clouds 

 which now hid the snows. As I turned toward camp a single snowflake 

 melted on my face, and I realized anew how grimly winter fights for 

 supremacy far up on the world's roof." 



We must make one more quotation, reflecting another side of pheasant 

 history: Capt. Beebe says: "My survey of their haunts made me pessi- 

 mistic in regard to their future. In India there seemed a slight lessening 

 among the natives of the religious regard for wild life which has been such a 

 boon to the birds in this densely populated part of the world. In the Malay 

 States great rubber plantings threaten the whole fauna of some places. 

 In Nepal and Yunnan the plume hunter is working havoc. In China the 

 changing diet from rice to meat and the demand in Europe for ship-loads 

 of frozen pheasants has swept whole districts clear of these birds." The 

 great war has checked many activities that have made for the destruction 

 of the pheasants, but this, he adds, is perhaps "the last pause in the slow, 

 certain kismet, which from the ultimate increase and spread of mankind, 

 must result in the total extinction of these splendid birds." 



After reading this we are more than ever grateful to all who have con- 

 tributed to make this beautiful work possible. While Capt. Beebe may 

 be the only man who has studied all the types of these wonderful birds 

 in their native haunts, — perhaps the only one who will enjoy that privi- 

 lege, — his facile pen and ability as a photographer combined with the talents 

 of his corps of artists and the generous support of Col. Kuser, have made 

 it possible for thousands of others to enjoy the reproduction of that which 

 it was given to him to see in reality. — W. S. 



Leo Miller's 'In the Wilds of South America.' ' — When Dr. Frank 

 M. Chapman began his investigations of South American bird life in 1911 

 he took with him to Colombia Leo E. Miller, a young man then quite 

 unknown in the field of zoological exploration. So readily did Mr. Miller 

 adapt himself to the explorer's life and such an adept field collector did 

 he become that he was kept in South America, in the interests of the 

 American Museum, almost continuously from that time until America 

 entered the war. During these six years he practically circled the coast of 

 the southern continent north of Buenos Ayres and visited every one of the 

 republics, carrying on active collecting and exploration in eight of them. 



While the technical results of at least a part of Mr. Miller's work have 

 been published by Dr. Chapman and others, mainly in the ' Bulletin' of the 

 American Museum, he has himself prepared the account of his travels, 



1 In the Wilds of South America, Six Years of Exploration in Columbia, Venezuela, 

 British Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. By Leo E. Miller of the American 

 Museum of Natural History, with over 70 illustrations and a map. New York, Charles 

 Scribners' Sons, 1918. 8vo. pp. 1-424. 



