68 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Material in Preparation for Publication. 



After-the-war economy has affected materially the list of 

 publications from this office. An index of the twelve volumes 

 of the annual reports of the State Ornithologist, which was 

 prepared last year by Dr. John B. May has failed of publica- 

 tion, also a list of Massachusetts organizations interested in 

 the study of bird life. These may be published at some future 

 time, but no promises can be made. As there seems to be no 

 probability that an annotated list of Massachusetts birds will 

 be printed at present, work on this has been discontinued. 



The principal work of the year regarding publications has 

 been the beginning of two volumes on the birds of Massa- 

 chusetts and other New England States, to be illustrated with 

 colored plates, the preparation of which was authorized in 1921 

 by the Legislature, under chapter 5 of the Resolves of 1921. 

 In addition to this authorization an appropriation of $4,000 

 was included in the annual budget, to be used in the prepara- 

 tion of illustrative material for the first volume of the work. 

 An agreement has been made with Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes, 

 the well-known artist and ornithologist of Ithaca, New York, 

 to prepare the drawings for the first volume, and he has com- 

 pleted and delivered some of them. Part of the text also has 

 been prepared. Already many calls for the completed work 

 have been received, but considerable time must elapse before 

 the matter for the first volume is ready for the printer. In 

 preparing this work it became necessary to settle conclusively 

 some questions regarding which the evidence of ornithologists 

 is contradictory. Correspondence with hundreds of ornitholo- 

 gists in the United States and Canada, and some in the Old 

 World, elicited many personal experiences in respect to the 

 use of wings under water by wild fowl, diving birds and other 

 water birds, the alleged suicide of such birds when wounded, 

 and the conveyance of the young to the ground or water by 

 tree-nesting ducks. A voluminous preliminary report on the 

 first two subjects has been prepared for the printer, and some 

 observations on the manner in which the wood duck conveys 

 its young to the water appear in the present report. 



