TOO Recent Literature. [April 



1879, and the last that of April, 18S7, has been issued. It is a large quarto 

 of 512 pages of text, illustrated by 35 beautiful hand-colored plates* by 

 Keulemans, the well-known ornithological artist and illustrator of Dres- 

 ser's 'Birds of Europe' and others of the more recent high-class European 

 bird books. The classification adopted is that of Sclater and Salvin's 

 'Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium' (1873), and the geographical field 

 that embraced between the United States-Mexican boundary on the one 

 hand and the Isthmus of Panama on the other, or the continental 

 part of that portion of the western hemisphere designated by Professor 

 Baird, in his 'Review of American Birds' (1S64-66), 'Middle America.' 



Volume I of the 'Biologia' includes the whole of the Oscines. and is the 

 only single and approximately complete work in existence on the special 

 subject to which it pertains. The high reputation of the authors is of 

 itself a sufficient guarantee that their task has been intelligently and thor- 

 oughly performed, and has resulted in a grand work which is absolutely 

 indispensable to students of New World ornithology, highly useful to 

 those who labor in other geographical fields, and must long remain the 

 standard authority on the birds of Central America. 



As was to be expected from the character of their previous writings on 

 the same subject, the authors of the 'Biologia' treat their subject from the 

 conservative standpoint to which English naturalists, for the most part, 

 still adhere; and it is the natural sequence of this method, but more es- 

 pecially the unfortunate adoption of the purely binomial system of no- 

 menclature, which affords most of the grounds for criticism ; the very great 

 importance of the work rendering such defects highly conspicuous. It . 

 would have been better had the authors followed, to some extent at least, 

 the rulings of the 'Committee on Species and Subspecies' of the American 

 Ornithologists' Union regarding the status of certain 'Nearctic' forms 

 which have been so carefully investigated with the aid of large series of 

 specimens on this side of the Atlantic, instead of depending on their own 

 limited, and often misleading, material. In all probability, however, the 

 remaining portion of the work will be less marred by errors of this kind, 

 since Mr. Henshaw's fine collection has been transferred to the British 

 Museum, where it can readily be compared with that belonging to the 

 authors of the 'Biologia,' also, we understand, to be deposited there as 

 each group is worked up. 



We have already remarked that the comparatively fewdefects of the work 

 are chiefly the direct result of adherence to the binomial system, "pure and 

 simple," of nomenclature. When this is strictly followed, the finest dis- 

 crimination and soundest judgment can hardly prevent inconsistent rulings 

 as to rank of forms, some subspecies being elevated to specific rank, and 

 others degraded to mere synomyms. Instances of this sort in Vol. I of 

 the 'Biologia' are not numerous, but there are enough to be regretted; 

 and since most of them affect forms belonging to the North American 



* While these illustrations are eminently satisfactory from an artistic point of view, 

 they mijiht have been more accurate omithologically. 



