° 1912 J Notes and News. 431 



It is incredible that a conception born of no particle of fact should be bo 

 tenacious of life. 



Here is an illustration of the truth. 



There are three prominent types of flycatching beak. The gigantic 

 mouth and so to speak no beak of the Goatsucker, the common sized, 

 stout beak of Tyrannus, and the sUm, long, bent-needle beak of a 

 Jacamar. By the common logic, each of these birds should be told 

 that it does not catch insects, since it is a physical impossibility that if a 

 beak of one particular shape does so, one of a different shape can also 

 do so. The fact that different costumes represent different details of 

 forest scenery is no more remarkable than that different species have a 

 different anatomy. 



In the animal world, each different mode of getting a living gathers into 

 a community members of widely differing genera and forms, but, in each 

 of these communities every differently shaped species will be found 

 to use his body proportionately differently in attaining the same end, and 

 for one of these to attain, in those same woods, inconspicuousness by passing 

 for a different forest detail from that counterfeited by his neighbor, is in no 

 way more remarkable than for him to bring to this community his different 

 anatomy, and the main point is that all these counterfeits do succeed. 



Abbott H. Thayer. 

 Monadnock, N. H., June 1, 1912. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



In the present issue of ' The Auk ' there is presented the sixteenth supple- 

 ment to the A. O. U. Check-List of N. A. Birds, the first since the appear- 

 ance of the new (third) edition of the Check-List. It is now nearly thirty 

 years since the A. O. U. Committe on the Classification and Nomenclature 

 of North American Birds was first appointed, and as a new generation of 

 ornithologists has grown up in the meantime, a word as to the objects and 

 province of this committee may not be out of place. 



Everyone has an undisputed right to describe as many new species or 

 races as he pleases and so fully has this privilege been exercised that new 

 forms have been split off on finer and finer grades of differentiation as the 

 years go by. Whether or not all these forms shall be included in the 

 Check-list is one of the questions that the A. O. U. has left to its Commit- 

 tee. The Committee endeavors to obtain authentic material from the 

 author of the new form and from elsewhere, and with the author's pre- 

 sentation of the case before it, decides by vote whether or not the .alleged 

 differences are sufficiently well marked to warrant recognition by name 



