yee Recent Literature. 333 
the correction of past errors. As Prof. Miller, who has of course due 
regard for philological proprieties, well says: ‘‘ We may recognize the 
law of priority as absolute, and retain the many monstrous and mis- 
spelled names to be found on the records of natural history, just as their 
makers left them. They are historic facts and serve to mark the group 
of animals or plants to which they apply, but these misshapen forms of 
words are not ornamental and they are unworthy of scholars. It is to be 
hoped that, in future, greater care may be taken to make words that give 
correctly the idea the author may have intended. . . . It costs no more to 
frame a name properly than to leave it a monstrosity.” —J. A. A. 
Chapman’s Notes on Birds Observed in Yucatan.'—In the present 
paper Mr. Chapman gives the ornithological results of his short 
excursion to Yucatan, where, in March, 1896, he spent about three weeks 
at Chichen-Itza in the study of bird-life. Seventy-four species were 
observed, a list of which, together with critical notes and remarks on 
habits, are here given, preceded by a short sketch of the physical features 
of the region and the derivation of its avifauna. 
A new genus, Agriocharis (p. 288), is created for the reception of the 
Ocellated Turkey; and an attempt is made to prove the Guatemalan 
Green Jay specifically distinct from the Rio Grande bird. With the latter 
we are unable to agree. 
A very useful list of the principal contrilutions to Yucatan birds 
concludes the paper. —C. W. R. 
‘Upon the Tree-Tops.’?— Students of birds out of doors will welcome 
a new volume by Mrs. Miller. Her enthusiastic and careful observations 
of the home-life of birds have not only added to our knowledge of the 
habits of species whose ways we supposed were well known, but they have 
shown how much there is in bird-life to interest every stroller in the 
woods and fields. It is the human-like nature of birds that appeals to 
Mrs. Miller and in writing from this point of view she brings birds nearer 
to us and arouses a sympathetic interest in them even among readers to 
whom her feathered friends are strangers. 
In the present volume we have accounts of the Loggerhead Shrike, 
Winter Wren, Yellow-breasted Chat, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, and 
more or less extended observations on numerous other birds in chapters 
entitled, ‘Tramps with an Enthusiast,’ ‘Young America in Feathers,’ 
‘Down the Meadow,’ ‘In a Colorado Nook,’ and ‘The Idyl of an Empty 
1Notes on Birds observed in Yucatan. By Frank M.Chapman. Bulletin 
of the American Museum of Natural History, VIII, pp. 271-290, Dec. 11, 1896. 
?Upon the Tree-Tops. By Olive Thorne Miller. Illustrated by J. Carter 
Beard. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. The Riverside 
Press, Cambridge, 1897. 16mo, pp. ix + 245, pll. x. 
