388 



NA TURE 



[August 25, 1898 



is impossible to feel that the quotations that have been 

 preserved are those that are most characteristic of the 

 master, or those by which he himself would wish to be 

 judged. Some happy expression, some lucky chance may 

 have attracted the attention of a pupil or a commentator, 

 with the result that we get transmitted to us a very imper- 

 fect view, and consequently we utterly fail to reconstruct 

 any adequate picture of the philosophical teaching as a 

 whole. If Plato, writing of Parmenides, almost a con- 

 temporary, could say "I fear lest we may not understand 

 what he said, and that we may fail still more to under- 

 stand his thoughts in saying it,'' how much more difficult 

 is it for us to obtain a clear conception. But this 

 difficulty doe's not detract at all from the value of Mr. 

 Fairbanks' work, or of those who have laboured in the 

 field of literary criticism. In entering into their labours 

 we learn with clearer precision the extent and the trust- 

 worthiness of the materials that exist for the study of 

 early Greek thought. 



A HUNDRED AND FIFTY NORTH 

 AMERICAN BIRDS. 

 Bird Neighbors : an Introductory Acquaintance with 

 One Hundred and Fifty Birds commonly found 

 in the Gardens., Meadows., and Woods about our 

 Homes. By Neltje Blanchan ; with Introduction by 

 John Burroughs. Pp. viii -f 234. Coloured plates. 

 (London : Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., Ltd., 

 . 1898.) 



A T the first glance this volume might well be mistaken 

 '- *- for an addition to the already extensive literature 

 relating to British birds ; but the spelling of the second 

 word in its somewhat cumbersome title at once proclaims 

 its Transatlantic origin. And, as a matter of fact, it is 

 really a popular account of some of the commoner birds 

 of the United States. Since it is confessedly printed in 

 New York, it is doubtless an English edition of a work 

 first published in the States ; and although it may be 

 most useful in the land of its birth, we may perhaps be 

 permitted to suggest that it would have been better had 

 its issue been restricted to that country. 



On first opening the book the reader is confronted with 

 a frontispiece purporting to represent the " Goldfinch,'' 

 but instead of seeing the bird properly so denominated, 

 he finds the so-called American^Goldfinch {Spinus tristis). 

 And, although the bird's proper title is given in the text, 

 the plate, for issue in this country, ought to have been 

 similarly lettered. This is by no means a solitary 

 instance as regards the legends to the plates ; while in 

 the systematic part it is even worse. We find, for 

 instance, the Hangnests, or Icteridce, popularised under 

 the names of blackbirds and orioles ; while in the family 

 {Turdidce) to which the birds properly so-called belong, 

 we have, in addition to thrushes, bluebirds and robins. 

 Doubtless this is good enough for a country in which 

 bison are miscalled buffalo, and stags of the red deer 

 group elk, but it will scarcely commend itself to English 

 readers. 



In her preface the lady author lays great stress on the 

 circumstance that "her knowledge has not been collected 

 NO. 1504, VOL. 58] 



from the stuffed carcasses of birds in museums [as if any 

 one examined stuffed specimens for descriptive purposes], 

 but gleaned afield." And in the introduction it is 

 written :—" The pictures, with a few exceptions, are 

 remarkably good and accurate, and these, with the 

 various groupings of the birds according to colour, 

 season, habitat, &c., ought to render the identification of 

 the birds, with no other weapon than an opera-glass, an 

 easy matter." 



It would be distinctly interesting to know which were 

 the exceptions above referred to. Was the plate of the 

 Yellow-throated Vireo, facing p. 189, one of them? In 

 this plate we have an obviously stuffed example (and not 

 a very well stuffed one at that) of the bird in question, 

 mounted upon one of the conventional museum perches. 

 The bird thus mounted has been fixed in the most 

 glaringly obvious manner to one of a series of twigs of 

 apple in blossom, and the whole reproduced as a picture. 

 Apart from the perch, the general effect might not have 

 been utterly bad, were it not that the twigs are placed in 

 the vertical when they should have been in the horizontal 

 position ! 



But there are even things artistically worse than this. 

 Many of the plates, such as those of the Bobolink and 

 the Brown Thrasher, appear to have been produced by 

 taking a landscape and placing in front of it either a 

 single (apparently stuffed) bird or a group of birds, and 

 then, by some process unknown to us, reproducing the 

 whole. And the effect is not pleasing. Either the 

 objects in the background stand out as though they 

 formed the middle distance, or they are hopelessly out 

 of focus and form a confused blurr. As already said, 

 the author inveighs against stuffed ''carcasses," but if 

 the Blackcap-Tit, or " Chickadee," forming the subject 

 of the plate facing p. 76, does not come under such 

 designation, we shall be greatly surprised. 



Neither can we commend the arrangement of the 

 birds described. At the commencement of the book 

 these are placed under their proper families, and to our 

 thinking no better arrangement could have been followed 

 in the sequel. But this by no means suits the author. 

 And after a little preliminary skirmishing in the way 

 of classing by habitats, season, and size, she finally 

 settles down to arrange the species by coloration 1 

 Consequently we have closely allied forms widely 

 separated, and incongruous species placed in juxta- 

 position, without, so far as we can see, one single 

 advantage gained over the ordinary system. To take 

 an example, we have two species of woodpeckers placed 

 among birds "conspicuously black and white," where 

 they are flanked on each side by a passerine, but a third 

 woodpecker (the "flicker") finds a far distant place 

 among "brown, olive, or greyish -brown, and brown and 

 grey sparrowy birds." Surely this is making confusion 

 for confusion's sake. 



Much more sympathy may be expressed for the 

 author's attempt to divide the birds of New York 

 according to whether they are permanent residents, or 

 make their appearance at particular seasons only ; and 

 this list may prove of use not only to the ordinary bird- 

 lover, but likewise to the student of migration and dis- 

 tribution. As regards the descriptions of the different 



