^OO Recent LUerature. [J'lly 



is studying. Who anionq; our • collectors ' can boast of a \igil over a bird's 

 nest which lasted for " nearly two months .... day after dav, early 

 and late, in storm and sunshine".'' With a just pride the patient watcher 

 writes, " now I know at least one family of Kingbirds," and wliether 

 the results of her obseryations are of more value than the ' skin' or 'full- 

 clutch' no one who reads her attractively written chapters will for a moment 

 doubt. Withal her enthusiasm is tempered by discretion. She does not 

 jump at conclusions nor sacrifice truth to rhetorical effect, and a careful 

 reading of the twenty-six chapters her book contains, leaves us wondering 

 whether we know any ornithologists who as observers have one half her 

 perseverance. Only one fault do we discover, a fault we are sure so careful 

 a writer will not fail to correct in the future \olumes we hope to see from 

 her hand. And this fault is lack of more detailed statements as regards 

 both date and locality. Under the heading 'Great South Bay' we find two 

 chapters from Massachusetts, while a record of the exact date on which her 

 observations were made would in nowise detract from the popular character 

 of the book and would add largely to th* scientific value it unquestionably 

 possesses. — F. M. C. 



'Wood Notes Wild.'* — Some of Mr. Cheney's studies of bird music are 

 already familar to us through the pages of the magazines in which, from 

 time to time, they have appeared. 



They have now been collected by his son and, with the addition of before 

 unpublished essays, copious extracts from the writings of other authors, and 

 an extended bibliography, issued under the above title. The whole, we 

 believe, forms the most extensive treatise on the subject extant. 



Every writer of bird biographies has experienced the difficulty of describ- 

 ing bird's songs in an identifiable manner. There are some cries or call-notes, 

 and more rarely songs, which so closel}' approach certain words of our 

 language that by common consent their owners are dubbed forthwith and 

 thus made to utter their own name, to the great assistance of beginners in 

 ornithology. To this class belong the Pewee, Chickadee, Towhee, Bob-white, 

 Squak, etc. But unfortunately the limits of human articulation are soon 

 passed, and Avhere description fails, as it too frequently does, we have ven- 

 tured to hope musical notation might succeed. Certainly no one could be 

 better fitted to prove its success than Mr. Cheney. A musician of un- 

 doubted ability, an ardent lover of nature, his book " is a record of the 

 pastime of an old lover of birds, of a musician who counted it among his 

 chief joys that he had lived thirty summers in a bird-haunted grove* — of 

 one to whom the voice of the wood and field were as familiar as those of 

 his own family" (editor's preface). We may than consider his labors as a 

 fair, if not a final test of the assistance which musical notation can give us 

 in recording and describing the songs of birds. 



* Wood Notes Wild | Notations of Bird Music | By | Simeon Pease Cheney | 

 Author of the American "Singing-book" I Collected and Arranged with Appendix, 

 Notes, Bibiliography. and General Index | By John Vance Cheney | . . . . | Boston | 

 Lee and Shepard Publishers | . . . | 1892. 12 mo. pp. i-xiv, 1-261, frontispiece. 



