Vol i909 :vi ] Notes and News - 333 



"Mr. H. F. Witherby, the Editor of British Birds, is inaugurating in 

 connection with his Magazine a scheme for marking birds in a similar way 

 in this country. It is hoped by this means to gain a more exact idea of the 

 movements of individual birds than has ever been possible by any other 

 method, and this should not only throw light upon the more general as- 

 pects of migration, but it should tell us a great deal that is at present ob- 

 scure with regard to particular points. For example, while we may know 

 the general distribution of a species in winter and summer, we do not know 

 the extent of the migration of individual birds; or, indeed, whether in such 

 cases as the Song-Thrush and Robin, certain individuals migrate at all. 

 The movement of sea-birds are very little understood, and much might be 

 learned from marking a large number. This plan might also tell us what 

 influence age has upon plumage, etc.; where a young bird, whose birth- 

 place is known, breeds; whether individuals return to previous nesting 

 haunts, and whether pairs come together again in successive breeding 

 seasons. 



A number of the readers of British Birds are taking the matter up, and 

 it is expected that a large number of birds of all kinds will be ringed this 

 summer. The rings are extremely light and do not in any way interfere 

 with the bird's power of flight, each is stamped " Witherby, High Holborn, 

 London," and bears a distinctive number, which in the smaller sizes is 

 stamped inside the ring, and it is hoped that anyone into whose hand 

 should fall a bird so marked will send the bird and the ring, or, if this is 

 not possible, then the particulars of the number on the ring, the species 

 of bird, and the locality and date of capture to the address given." 



Of special interest to ornithologists, as well as to students of biogeography 

 in general, is Dr. Philip P. Calvert's map of the distribution of mean an- 

 nual temperatures in Mexico and Central America, recently published in 

 the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (Vol. 

 LX, 1908, pi. xxvi). The map is colored to indicate five temperature 

 zones, ranging from 10° to 30° C. (50° to 86° F.), each zone covering thus 

 a range of 9° F., and distinguished by a different color. It is shown that 

 a given mean annual temperature reaches a much higher latitude and a 

 higher elevation on the Pacific coast than on the Atlantic; and that the 

 mean annual temperature of the plateau region of Mexico (59°-68° F.) 

 extends continuously but in narrowing width to about latitude 18° in 

 southern Mexico, and thence in small and distantly separated areas to 

 Nicaragua and Costa Rica. 



A new natural history journal, entitled, 'The Midland Naturalist 

 devoted to Natural History and primarily that of the Prairie States,' 

 has made its appearance, the first number bearing date April, 1909. It is 

 an octavo, and the first number, consisting of 28 pages and 3 plates, is 

 mainly botanical. It contains, however, the beginning of a nominal 

 'Tentative List of the Birds of St. Joseph Co. Ind. and Vicinity,' which 



