1 66 Recent Literature. I A n l !.ji 



L April 



RECENT LITERATURE. 



Nehrling's Birds. 1 — The favorable opinion expressed (Auk, VII, Jan. 

 1S90, p. 70) of this work upon the appearance of its first two Parts is fully 

 justified in the event of the completion of Volume I, which reaches us in 

 a very handsome exterior. We believed then that Mr. Nehrling had a 

 message to deliver, and were not mistaken. From his earliest boyhood 

 he has studied birds in their native haunts, and has taken time to tell us 

 what they taught him. His life-histories are based chiefly upon his own 

 observations, made during many years from Wisconsin to Florida and 

 Texas; where original research has failed to reach, he has known how to 

 draw upon various sources which need not be here specified. "For the 

 purpose of studying the life of our birds I spent several years in Texas, 

 five years in the Ozark region of southwestern Missouri, and a number of 

 years in different parts of Illinois. I also visited the southern Allegha- 

 nies and different localities in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, 

 Georgia, Florida, etc. Yet this work would be incomplete should I have 

 neglected to quote freely from the writings of our great American orni- 

 thologists of the present time." Those to whom such characterization 

 may apply will no doubt be glad to find that anything they have written 

 has served so excellent a purpose as Mr. Nehrling's. It would not be 

 difficult to characterize his work in words of our own, but we will hear 

 what the author has to say of his intent. Authors' opinions of their own 

 performances are often as reliable as any reviewer's can be, and never 

 more so than when a modest and entirely honest author speaks of what 

 he set about to accomplish. "In the present work," says its author in his 

 preface, "which is intended to fill the gap between the very expensive and 

 the merely technical ornithological books, I aim 'to combine accuracy and 

 reliability of biography with a minimum of technical description,' and to 

 have the work 'illustrated in such a way that all figures are recognizable.' 

 Although this work is written for all lovers of natural history, I specially 

 endeavor to inspire our young people with a tender regard for the feath- 

 ered minstrels of our woodlands, fields and meadows, groves and gardens." 



We can congratulate Mr. Nehrling upon the entirely successful accom- 

 plishment of his designs. We should say much more in the present 

 instance, had it not fallen to our reviewing lot to have spoken quite to 



1 Our Native Birds | — of — | Song and Beauty, | being | A Complete History of all 

 the Songbirds, Flycatchers, Hummingbirds, Swifts, | Goatsuckers, Woodpeckers, 

 Kingfishers, Trogons, Cuckoos | and Parrots, of North America. | — ■ | By Henry 

 Nehrling, | [etc.] — With thirty-six colored plates after water-color paintings | by Prof. 

 Robert Ridgway, [etc.], | Prof. A. Goering, Leipzig, and Gustav Muetzel, Berlin. | — 

 I Volume I. I — I Milwaukee: | George Brumder. | 1893. Large 4to or sm" fol., pp. 

 i— 1, 1-371, pll. col'd. i-xviii, some figg. in text; ed. le luxe, full Russia, gilt-edged, rubri- 

 cated margins and title. 



