Recent Literature. 49 



the writer during the month ending April 17th, 1881, at ' Cinclaire ' plan- 

 tation, situated in the parish of West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the 

 right bank of the Mississippi, one hundred and twenty-seven miles bj 

 river above New Orleans." 



The locality is described as •' flat and uninteresting .... The cultivated 

 grounds are mainly comprised in a strip ranging from one to three miles in 

 width, along the rivers and principal baj'ous, the remainder of the state 

 being chiefly occupied by extensive forests and swamp lands." 



The author considers the list " of quite as much interest for what it 

 does not include, as for what it does," and comments on the apparent 

 absence of the Catbird, Long-billed Marsh Wren, Black-and-white Creeper, 

 Yellow-rumped, White-browed, Black-throated Green, Yellow Red-poll, 

 and Kentucky Warblers, Large-billed Water Thrush, Redstart, Song 

 Sparrow, and Common Pewee ; to which he might with equal propriety 

 have added the Prothonotary and Blue-winged Yellow Warblers and the 

 Acadian Flycatcher. But we cannot believe with him that the non- 

 occurrence, on the present occasion, of most of these species has any special 

 significance, either as affecting their general distribution in, or usual 

 migration through, the region of which the paper treats. The country 

 about " Cinclaire " may have been unsuited to the habits of some of them, 

 while the early date of Dr. Langdon's departure, taken in connection with 

 the exceptional lateness of the season, will suflficiently explain his failure 

 to detect a number of the migratory ones which have been found near 

 the mouth of the Mississippi by Mr. Henshaw, and which are well known 

 to extend over the Mississippi valley at large only a few hundred miles 

 further to the northward. 



Dr. l^angdon's thoroughness and energy as a field collector are, how- 

 ever, so well known through the medium of his valuable papers on Ohio 

 birds, that we may rest assured that his work at " Cinclaire " was well 

 done, and the paper will be welcomed as an acceptable contribution to 

 our knowledge of a region which has been nearly a terra incognita to 

 ornithologists since the days of Audubon. — W. B. 



Krider's Field Notes.* — In an unpretending little pamphlet of some 

 eighty odd pages Mr. Krider has " endeavored to describe and give the 

 history of only those species of birds of the United States" which he has 

 "collected and mounted," and whose nests have come under his personal 

 observation. Had this plan been carried out with only ordinary fore- 

 thought and intelligence it could scarcely have failed to result in a valuable 

 contribution to our knowledge of North American birds, for Mr. Krider's 

 long experience as a field collector must have afforded unusual opportuni- 

 ties for original investigation and observation. But a casual glance through 



* Forty Years' Notes of a Field Ornithologist, by John Krider, Member of the Phil- 

 adelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and author of Krider's Sporting Anecdotes, 

 Philadelphia. Giving a description of all birds killed and prepared by him. Philadel- 

 adelphia, 1879, 8vo. pp. i-xi, 1-84. 



