NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION. 



IN the Addenda to the Fourth Edition of the Handbook will be 

 found a list of the changes in families and genera made by the No- 

 menclature Committee of the American Ornithologists' Union since 

 the publication of the Handbook ; descriptions of new species recog- 

 nized in the third edition of the Check- List of North American Birds 

 (1910) and in the Sixteenth Supplement to the Check-List (1912) ; a list 

 of species that should be dropped from the Handbook, either because 

 they have been eliminated from the Check-List, rejected by the No- 

 menclature Committee, thrown out of the western United States by 

 the subdivision of species, or because the records on which they were 

 included have been found unsatisfactory ; and also a list of the birds 

 of the western United States in the nomenclature of the 1910 Check- 

 List with corrected ranges ; together with a list of books of reference 

 published since the first edition of the Handbook. 



F. M. B. 



May, 1914. 



