98 Recent Literature. [j^ 



Carriker's 'Notes on Costa Rican Formicariidae.' — These notes 1 record 

 Myrmotherula axillaris (Vieill.) as new to Costa Rica; give Drymophila 

 stictoptera Lawr. as the male of D. Icemosticta Salvin; raise Myrmelastes' 

 exsul occidentalis Cherrie to a full species; and discuss the range in Central 

 America of the light and dark forms of Cercomacra tyrannina. — J. A. A. 



Craig on the Voice in Pigeons as a Means of Social Control. 2 — The 



author considers (1) Social Development of the Young; (2) Social Life of 

 Breeding Birds; (3) Social Relations outside of the Family. The present 

 paper is announced as preliminary to a book on the general subject of the 

 development of bird songs which the author hopes soon to publish, giving 

 the results of several years of investigation of the subject. His conclu- 

 sions are that utility of the voice in birds is of much wider scope than 

 has hitherto been suspected. "The voice," he observes, "is a means of 

 social control: that is to say, the voice is a means of influencing the be- 

 havior of individuals so as to bring them into cooperation, one with an- 

 other." The illustrations are here drawn from the domestic pigeon. He 

 claims that a bird is not "the good machine that naturalists have supposed 

 it to be. No internal machinery, no system of instincts, be it ever so 

 perfect, could carry an individual dove through the vicissitudes of social 

 life without the agency of social control .... Avhat is meant is, that to 

 treat the behavior as instinctive is to give it an inadequate description. 

 The inadequacy consists in studying the individuals, and in treating the 

 individual as a distinct entity. What is needed is, to transcend this 

 individualistic view point, and to see that the instincts of the individual 

 can effect their purposes only when they are guided and regulated by in- 

 fluences from other individuals." The song is considered as one means of 

 social control, and its uses are found to be numerous and complexly inter- 

 related, of which a partial list is given. — J. A. A. 



Taverner and Swales on the Birds of Point Pelee, Ontario. 3 — Point 

 Pelee, near the western end of Lake Erie, "forms the most southern point 

 of the main land of the Canadian Dominion." It is V-shaped, two long 

 low sandbars enclosing a "swamp of varying degrees of wetness," and 

 several small ponds, while portions are wooded. It thus forms a resort 

 for all classes of birds. It also seems to form a well marked migration 

 route for a large area to the northward, and is further, according to the 

 authors, tinged with such intrusive southern forms as the Cardinal, Yellow- 

 breasted Chat, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and Carolina Wren, which "have 



1 Notes on Costa Rican Formicariidoe, By M. A. Carriker, Jr. Ann. Carnegie Mu- 

 seum, V, No. 1, 1908, pp. 8-10. 



2 The Voices of Pigeons regarded as a means of social control. By Wallace Craig. 

 Amer. Journ. of Sociology, XVI, No. 1, July, 1908, pp. 86-100. 



3 The Birds of Point Pelee. By P. A. Taverner and B. H. Swales. The Wilson 

 Bulletin, Vol. XIX, 1907, pp. 37-53, 82-99, 133-153; Vol. XX, 1908, pp. 79-96 

 107-129. Also separate. 



