5& Recent Literature. 



New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, a part of the State of Colorado, and 

 some of Southern CaUfornia." The surface of the region is greatly varied, 

 and the climate presents extremes equalled in no other area of similar 

 extent in the United States. The region is not only walled in by high 

 mountain ranges, but embraces chains and peaks that nearly reach the line 

 of perpetual snow ; yet the greater portion is low, and includes some of 

 the hottest and most arid portions of the continent. The influence of such 

 highly diverse conditions leaves its impress upon animal and vegetable 

 life, so that here are developed among the birds modifications of coloration 

 and structure of special interest. Here, too, the birds " find their summer 

 and winter homes, and perform their migrations rather according to ' the 

 lay of the land ' than with reference to degrees of latitude." 



Tlie two hundred and eighteen pages of " Bibliographical Appendix " 

 with which the work closes is by no means the least important part of the 

 volume. Although so extended, embracing about fifteen hundred (though 

 the author incorrectly says " nearly or about one thousand ") titles, it is 

 restricted to a "List of Faunal Publications relating to North American 

 Ornithology," being " the North American section of the ' Faunal Publica- 

 tions ' series " of a general " Bibliography of Ornithology," upon which the 

 author has been for some years engaged. The scope and plan of the 

 present instalment of the work is explicitly stated by the author to include 

 " titles and digests of works and papers relating solely to Birds of North 

 America indiscriminately, collectively, or in general. In short, the titles 

 are those that relate to the Birds of North America as such, — not as com- 

 ponents of any genus or family." Hence are excluded all monographs, all 

 general treatises on birds of larger areas, even if including North Amer- 

 ica, and all general works on ornithology. " By this means," the author 

 adds, "' the scope of the present article is conveniently narrowed and ren- 

 dered perfectly definite ; and only in a few instances, for one or another 

 particular reason, is the rigidity of the rule of exclusion relaxed." The 

 bulk of the titles hence consists of " local lists " and articles of an allied 

 character, but embraces a range of publications from the works of Wilson 

 or Audubon down to the " least note " on the subject, with also the re- 

 views and notices that relate to them. A few titles are included upon 

 arbitrary grounds, but perhaps come as naturally here as elsewhere. Con- 

 trary, however, to what one might expect in a list of faunal publications, 

 records of the capture of single species, as, for example, the Lark Finch or 

 the Lark Bunting in Massachusetts, do not here find a place. Although 

 an inconvenient omission, the explanation is obvious, when we reflect that 

 this list of titles is only one division of a general work, in which the titles 

 are systematically classified under perhajis a hundred or more different 

 heads, and where references to single species, whatever the character of 

 the reference, are entered under family headings ; 'the instances cited 

 hence coming under " Frinf/ilUdcB " in the general scheme of arrangement, 

 although strictly faunal in character. On the other hand, a paper chroni- 



