° 1911 J Recent Literature. 289 



pendencc, Missouri, May 1, having joined " a Virginia Company of five 

 men, one wagon and eight mules." On June 2 the party overtook a large 

 ox-train on the Platte River, under the command of Captain Boone of 

 Kentucky, which Gambel joined in the capacity of medical assistant. 

 After many months of hardship, Boone's train reached the Sierra, where 

 heavy falls of snow compelled the abandonment of the cattle and wagons, 

 and the men endeavored to cross the mountains with such provisions as 

 thoy could carry. Most of them perished, " but Boone, Gambel, and a 

 few others succeeded in making their way to Rose's Bar on Feather River," 

 in what is now Plumas County, California. Here, on December 13, 1850, 

 Gambel died of typhoid fever, at the early age of about thirty years. — 

 J. A. A. 



Mathews's ' Birds of Australia.' — Part 2 ' of this great work com- 

 pletes the Turnicidse and includes the Treronidse and part of the Col- 

 umbidse. In this part fourteen species are figured and described, and both 

 text and plates conform to the high standard set in Part 1, noticed in detail 

 in the January issue of this journal. — J. A. A. 



McGee's ' Notes on the Passenger Pigeon.' — In the issue of ' Science ' 

 for December 30, 1910, Dr. McGee, in an article of five and a half pages, 2 

 gives his recollections of the Passenger Pigeon as observed by him in east- 

 ern Iowa " in the sixties and early seventies," and of other pigeons he 

 mistook for this species in 1905 in the " Sierra Gila, seventy-five miles 

 southwest of Yuma and near the Mexican boundary." His recollections of 

 Passenger Pigeons in Iowa form a welcome addition to the reminiscences 

 of a species now probably extinct as a wild bird, but the Arizona notes are 

 unfortunately based on an evident misidentification of a species known 

 locally in the arid Southwest as the " Sonora Pigeon." Although his 

 account of its habits and appearance is detailed, and in some ways con- 

 forms to the characters of the Passenger Pigeon, no specimens were saved 

 for positive identification, and in the light of our present knowledge of the 

 habits and range of this species doubtless few ornithologists will be willing 

 to accept his record of the Passenger Pigeon in arid southwestern Arizona 

 as a valid record for the species without the confirmation of actual speci- 

 mens from the region in question. The pros and cons of the case were 

 considered in a later issue of ' Science.' 3 — J. A. A. 



i Birds of Australia. By Gregory M. Mathews. Part 2, January 31, 1911. 

 Royal 4to, pp. 97-136, pll. xxii-xxxv, colored. Witherby & Co., London. 



2 For full title and conditions of publication see the notice of Part 1, antea. pp. 

 135, 136. 



Notes on the Passenger Pigeon. By W J McGee. Science, N. S., Vol. XXXII, 

 pp. 958-964, December 30, 1910. 



3 The Arizona ' Passenger Pigeons'. By J. A. Allen. Science, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 

 217-219, February 10, 1911. 



