8 4 Recent Literature. fae 
remained practically unaffected by the conditions which have produced 
the differences among the birds; the temperature of the host’s body, the 
feathers as food, all of the environment of the parasite is practically 
unchanged. The parasitic species thus remains unchanged, while the 
ancestral Larus or Anas species becomes differentiated into a dozen or 
score of specific forms, all with a common parasite. -If this proposed 
solution of the problem may be accepted, it introduces a factor into 
problems of distribution, where parasites are concerned, which I do not ’ 
recall having seen presented before.” —J. A. A. 
Thompson on the Cranial Osteology of the Parrots.!— “To discover 
anatomical characters such as might yield or help to yield a natural clas- 
sification of the Parrots has been the desire of many ornithologists, but 
the search has availed little.” 
Protessor Thompson’s line of research is a detailed study of the quad- 
rate, the auditory region, and particularly of the orbital ring as regards 
its completeness or incompleteness, and the cranial bones taking part in 
its formation. ‘These are the lachrymal, or prefrontal as Prof. Thompson 
prefers to call it, the postorbital or postfrontal, and the squamosal, and 
the changes are so rung that when a suborbital ring is present it may be 
formed by the prefrontal and postfrontal, the prefrontal and squamosal, 
or, as in the Cockatoos, all three may unite, thus forming a supratem- 
poral fossa. The conditions prevailing in many members of the various 
families and subfamilies admitted by Mivart are discussed in considerable 
detail, but while additional emphasis is given to the family rights of 
Stringops and Nestor, Prof. Thompson has given us no summary of his 
own conclusions, leaving us to make our own applications of the points 
he has given. The paper is most valuable, embodying as it does the 
results of long study, but it again emphasizes the familiar fact that 
among birds minor structural variations are so great that it is practically 
impossible to find any one character by means of which even small 
groups may be separated.— F. A. L. 
Lange’s ‘Our Native Birds, Howto Protect them and Attract them 
to Our Homes.’*— As the title explains, this is a popular bird book on 
rather new lines, it being devoted to an exposition of how to protect birds 
and to promote their increase in the vicinity of our homes. ‘The first sec- 
tion of the work relates to the decrease in both song and game birds and 
1On Characteristic Points in the Cranial Osteology of the Parrots. By 
D’Arcy W. Thompson, C. B., F. Z.S. Proc. Zool. Soc. London, Jan., 1899. 
? Our Native Birds | How to Protect them and Attract | them to our Homes 
| By | D. Lange | author of “Handbook of Nature Study” | Instructor in 
Nature Study in the Public Schools | of St. Paul, Minnesota | With I[lustra- 
tions | New York | The Macmillan Company | London: Macmillan & Co., 
Ltd. | 1899 | All rights reserved.— 12mo, pp. xii + 162. $1.00. 
