246 Recent Literature. [^ 



left at least 400 species and subspecies, a larger number than has been 

 recorded from any other State, except California, and nearly three- 

 fourths of the total number of birds known from the Mississippi Valley. 

 This unusually rich avifauna, as Professor Brunei- remarks, is due 

 both to the faunal position of Nebraska and to its diversified topography. 

 — F. M. C. 



Cory's ' Hunting and Fishing in Florida,' with ' a Key to the Water 

 Birds of the State.' 1 — • The strictly ornithological portion of the work, 

 or the ' Key,' consists of pages 133-304, and is limited to a consideration of 

 the Water Birds of Florida, beginning with the Grebes and ending with 

 fhe Plovers. It is profusely illustrated with process cuts in the text, 

 most of them very effective and pleasing, but a few show that they were 

 made from specimens that were defective in respect to taxidermy. The 

 kev proper consists of a cut of the head (and sometimes of other parts, 

 as the foot) of each genus treated with a few lines of text to each species, 

 in which the distinctive characters are emphasized by the use of heavy 

 tvpe, followed by a reference to the page where the bird is later more 

 fullv described. What maybe called the key proper, with its accompany- 

 in g -cuts and diagrams, occupies about fifty pages, and is followed by a 

 descriptive list of the species, consisting of a brief but apparently suffi- 

 cient diagnosis of each, and a short paragraph on the character of its 

 occurrence in Florida. Nearly every species mentioned is illustrated with 

 a cut of the head, often of both male and female where the sexes differ, 

 or bv a full-length figure, all original and prepared expressly for the 

 present work. Says the author: " in preparing the present Key, I have 

 striven to make it as simple and non-technical as possible, my object being 

 to enable any one totally unfamiliar with birds to identify with compara- 

 tive ease anv species of Florida water-bird." Apparently his effort to 

 make the way easy, even for the novice, should be successful. 



Preceding the bird part is a chapter devoted to the snakes of Florida, 

 in the form of a copiously annotated list. There is also an anno- 

 tated list of the mammals of the State, evidently prepared with much 

 care, in which we note that the Florida panther is characterized as a 



Hunting and Fishing | in | Florida, | including a | Key to the Water 

 Birds I known to occur in the State. | By | Charles B. Cory. | Curator of the 

 Department of Ornithology in the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago ; 

 Fellow of the | Linnaean and Zoological Societies of London ; Member of the 

 American Ornithologists' | Union ; of the British Ornithologists' Union ; 

 Honorary Member of the | California Academy of Sciences, etc., etc. | Author 

 of I "The Beautiful and Curious Birds of the World," "The Birds | of the 

 Bahama Islands," " The Birds of Haiti and San | Domingo," " The Birds of 

 the West Indies," " A Naturalist in the Magdalen Islands," etc., etc. | For 

 sale by | Estes & Lauriat, | Boston, Mass. | 1896. Sm. 4to, pp. 304, 2 photo- 

 gravure plates, and about 200 cuts in the text. 



