Recent Literature. l6cj 



lines of exploration across the continent to the Pacific, while a special 

 survey was made of the boundary line separating the United States and 

 Mexico. In the meantime agents of the Hudson's Bay Company and of 

 the Smithsonian Institution had explored the natural history of vast portions 

 of the great northern interior, extending from our northern frontier to 

 the Arctic Sea. The treasures gathered from this wide area had been 

 brought together at the Smithsonian Institution and formed the basis of 

 Baird's monumental work on North American ornithology published in 

 1858, forming Vol. IX of " Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a 

 Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific." It is then 

 perhaps a matter of little surprise that the 491 species known to Audubon 

 in 1S39 should have been increased to 760 — an addition of 269 — in 1S59. 

 In the nearly equal interval (twenty-one years) next following, almost the 

 whole of the vast unsettled region west of the Mississippi was explored in 

 detail by four regularly organized government surveys, each with their 

 ornithological assistants, while officers of the United States Army and 

 private collectors added greatly to our ornithological knowledge of pre- 

 viously almost wholly unexplored localities, to say nothing of our new 

 territory of Alaska, the ornithology of which has now already received 

 much attention. The accumulation of material thereby resulting has not 

 only added many new forms but thrown much light upon the relationship of 

 others, and rendered necessary many changes in nomenclature. In 18:59 

 we had gathered the first fruits; we now have the mature harvest; but 

 there is still doubtless much left for the gleaners. 



The additions made since 1859 are ^ ar l ess numerous than those which 

 marked the period of twenty years immediately preceding, but the wonder 

 is' that they are so many rather than so few, when we consider how fully 

 the Great West had been explored prior to i860. In comparing the 

 present list with that of 1S59, the author observes that it "contains 226 

 valid species and recognized races which have either been first described 

 or added to the North American fauna since 1859, while, on the other 

 hand, no less than 42 names of the old catalogue have been relegated to 

 the ranks of synonymy, and 20 more removed as extralimital. Further- 

 more, of the remaining 698 names over 300 have been more or less 

 amended, so that only 395 of the 760 names as given in the old catalogue 

 are retained in the current nomenclature!" {op. cit. p. 7). The "actual 

 number of names in the catalogue of 1859 ' s 764" {i.e. 760); in the 

 present catalogue (1SS1), •• 924," an "apparent increase of 164." In the 

 present catalogue are added 127 species and 99 subspecies, making the 

 total, as above stated, of 226 new names. The number of names of the 

 old catalogue, or their equivalents, retained in the new. is, species, 637, 

 subspecies, 61, making 698 names in a total of 760, or an elimination of 

 62. Besides the 62 species wholly eliminated as extralimital or synonyms, 

 61 are reduced to subspecific rank, and 100 generic and 89 specific names 

 have been changed. In the present catalogue only the species are sepa- 

 rately numbered, the subspecies being indicated by letters joined to the 

 number of the species to which the subspecies are respectively referred. 



