352 Audubon’s Ornithology, First Volume. 
ists in many inextricable problems in American ornithology. 
Thus, for instance, the Falco lineatus of Gmelin, our common 
red-shouldered hawk, he would find variously described as the 
young or the old of the F. hyemalis, asa distinct species, ete., and 
he might read over the pages of Bonaparte, Wilson, Nuttall, as 
well as the two first volumes of Audubon’s text to his larger 
plates, changing his mind at each authority to which he referred, 
and at last be utterly unable to decide amid the labyrinth of con- 
flicting testimony. But the work before us would solve his 
doubts, by telling him that both were but varieties of the same 
ir he same would be the case with the rough-legged hawk, 
which he would here find to be but one bird, although multiplied 
into the Falco niger, F. Sancti-Johannis, ete. And so with a 
large number of birds to which we have not room to refer, at the 
length we could wish ; the confusion in which they had become 
entangled being such as to throw no slight obstacles in the way 
of him who attempts to wade through them without assistance. 
We would therefore, from a strong sense of the want of it, ad- 
vise a cheap republication by Mr. Audubon of his Synopsis. 
The remaining work is one of a much more extensive charac- 
ter than the other, being a full and complete history, so far as 
present knowledge on the subject extends, of all the known spe- 
cies of the birds of North America. It is designed as a republi- 
cation of his great work in such a form and at so reduced a price 
as to render it accessible to very many who were shut out from 
the other, with all the additions not only of new species, but also 
of new facts relative to those before known, and the whole scien- 
tifically arranged. ‘The entire work, embracing colored plates— 
miniatures in most instances of his large work—as well as the 
text incorporated with them, is published at a cost of less than a 
tenth part of the expense of his former publication. It isgissued 
in numbers, each containing the plates and descriptions of five 
species of birds. The first volume, embraced in fourteen num- 
bers, and consequently containing seventy species, is, thus far, all 
yet published. It forms, however, adequate means of judging 
of the character of the entire work when published. As it will, 
in all ~ ssi be for years to come the standard of American 
: , it deserves our careful consideration as a scientific 
e of the most a of the natural sciences. 
