'Sq^-I Recent Liferatare. 6 1 



implies this, we have a work of far more limited scope, the proper title of 

 whiL-h would he a 'Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern 

 North America, based on Niittall's Manual.' For, after reading- through 

 three and a half pages of the four and a half pages of 'Preface,' devoted 

 chieflv to an eulogium on Nuttall's original work, we meet the statement 

 that the limits of a handbook compel the omission of "those species 

 wiiich occur onlv to the westward of the Mississippi valley, though I have 

 LMideavored to make mention of every bird that has occurred within this 

 Eastern Faunal Province, from the Gulfof Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, 

 and to give their distribution and breeding area so far as these are 

 known." This, then, is the real scope of the work and a correct statement 

 of the nature and extent of the supplementary matter ; it also accounts 

 for the small size of the revised Nuttall. It is quite true that "only a few- 

 short chapters" of Nuttall "have been lost through restricting the scope 

 of the present work to Eastern forms," but it would seem a little more in 

 the line of strict commercial and scientific integrity to indicate the fact at 

 some point earlier than in the last third of the preface. Indeed, the pro- 

 spectus issued by the publishers goes so far as to promise "to give the reader 

 the latest acqtiired facts regarding the species mentioned in the original 

 work, also an account of the species and subspecies that have been dis- 

 covered since Nuttall wrote," etc., with no intimation anywhere that the 

 work is not a handbook of North American ornithology as implied in the 

 title. The prospectus further implies the presence of many excellent 

 features, "so far elaborated as the limits of a 'hand-book' will permit" — 

 this saving clause covering apparently a large mental reservation. 



The book, so far as it goes, is excellent, though not above criticism at 

 many points, not a few of the annotations having an apparently perfunc- 

 tory character, and being occasionally defective in point of accuracy and 

 completeness, in respect to the ground they purport to cover. Occasion- 

 ally the spirit of some of the comments is not eminently creditable from 

 the pen of an intelligent ornithologist. The following from the 'Preface' 

 is a case in point where, in contrasting Nuttall's work with that of later 

 workers, we read : "For if a great advance has been made in the study of 

 scientific ornithology, — which term represents only the science of bird- 

 skins, the names by which they are labelled, and the sequence of these 

 names, in other words, the classification of birds, — if this science has ad- 

 vanced far beyond Nuttall's work, the study of bird-life, the real history 

 of our birds, remains just about where Nuttall and his contemporaries left 

 it. The present generation of working ornithologists have been too busy 

 in hunting up new species and in variety-making to study tlie habits of 

 birds with equal care and diligence, and it is to Wilson and Audubon and 

 Nuttall that we are chiefly indebted even at this day for what we know of 

 bird-life" ! Is this, then, the estimate Mr. Chamberlain places on the thou- 

 sands of pages of field notes published during the last fifteen years by his 

 confreres of the Nuttall Club and the A. O- U.— in the 'Nuttall Bulletin,' 

 'The Auk, 'and the -O^ & O.,' to say nothing of other channels of publicn- 

 tion !— J. A. A. 



