Recent Literature. 137 



Channel, at wliich locality the first two weeks of June were spent ; Santa 

 Barbara, where the party remained until July 13 ; the rej,'ion about Mt. 

 Whitney, visited in September ; and, lastly, Kernvi lie and Walker's Basin, 

 where the season was ended in October. When it is taken into consider- 

 ation that much, if not nearly all, of the ground traversed had been pre- 

 viously more or less carefully worked up by ornithological explorers, it is 

 not to be wondered at that comparatively few discoveries are chronicled 

 in the present paper. Among the more important results are the exten- 

 sion, either southward or westward, of the previously recorded range of 

 many species of birds. Several rather tangled problems of seasonal dis- 

 tribution are likewise satisfactorily solved ; as in the case of the two 

 Thrushes, Turdus Swain^oni xistulatus and T. pallasi nanus, the former 

 being ascertained to be the species which breeds in California, while the 

 latter occurs only as a migrant from regions farther north. Spizella brew- 

 eri i.s, we notice, accorded specific rank, and on apparently substantial 

 grounds ; but in the case of the Fox Sparrows (genus Passerella) we believe 

 the authoi''s more recent investigations havQ failed to confirm the arrange- 

 ment settled upon in the present paper. The biographical annotations are 

 often full, and always exceedingly interesting ; especially so is the account 

 of the breeding " rookery," of the Red-and-white Shouldered Blackbirds 

 {Agelctus tricolor) in a nettle-bed, and the description of the habits of the 

 little-known Wandering Tatler (Heteroscelus incanus). 



Mr. Henshaw was misinformed respecting the nest of Empidonax trailli 

 pusillus " built in the hollow of a tree." The nest referred to is in the 

 writer's possession, together, with the parent birds, which are Empido- 

 nax flaviventris difficilis. The by far too frequent typographical errors 

 which occur throughout the report somewhat mar its otherwise fair ap- 

 pearance, but we understand that this was unavoidable, as the author was 

 absent and inaccessible at the time of the final revise. As a whole the 

 paper is a most creditable one, and forms a very acceptably contribution to 

 our store of knowledge upon the Ornithology of the State of California. 



II. Report for 1877.* — This report, which we have just received, 

 opens with a description of the country investigated by Mr. Henshaw 

 during the season of 1876, and which lies in the neighborhood of Carson 

 City, Nevada. Immediately following is a systematic and very able con- 

 sideration of the faunal provinces of the United States, more especially the 

 Middle and Pacific ones. The eastern slope of the Sierras, though j^rop- 

 erly belonging to the Pacific Province, is shown to be, to a certain extent, 

 intermediate in its character between it and the Middle Province. The 



* Annual Report upon the Geographical Surveys West of the One-Hundredth 

 Meridian, etc. By George M. Wheeler, First Lieutenant of Engineers, U. S. A. 

 Being Appendix NN of the Annual Report of Engineers for 1877. Washington 

 Government Printiug-OflBce, 1877. Report on the Ornithology of Portions of 

 Nevada and California. By Mr. H. W. Henshaw. pp. 1303-1322. 



VOL. III. 10 



