349 Correspondence. aus 
Ornithologische Monatsberichte, V, April-June, 1897. 
Osprey, The, I, Nos. 6-7, April-June, 1897. 
Ottawa Naturalist, X, No. 12, XI, Nos. 1, 2, March-—June, 1897. 
Our Animal Friends, XXIV, Nos. 8-10, April-June, 1897. 
Proceedings Academy of Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1897, Part 1. 
Proceedings California Acad. Sci., 2d Ser., VI, 1896, 3d Ser., Zoology, 
I, Nos. 1-3, 1897, Geology, I, No. 1, 1897. 
Proceedings Indiana Acad. Sci., 1894, 1895. 
Science (2) V, Nos. 115-130, 1897. 
Shooting and Fishing, XXI, Nos. 23-26, XXII, Nos. 1-10, 1897. 
Transactions of the Nat. Hist. Soc. of Glasgow, IV, part 3, 1895-96. 
ZoGlogist, The (4), Nos. 4-6, April-June, 1897. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
The A. O. U. Check-List. 
Epitors or ‘THE AUK’: — 
Dear Sirs :—I have been much impressed with Dr. Coues’s arraignment 
of the arrangement of our present Check-List— having felt for some 
time its deficiencies, but scarcely daring to hope for its improvement. 
While, of course, aware of the real difficulties in the way and the clash of 
Opinions that must arise when the anchors are raised, I believe that there 
is a call now not only for a rearrangement of the genera and species in 
many places, but that, in some instances, this should extend to the 
families — just possibly to an order or two. 
With our present sequence of orders, many of the families, as they now 
stand, express a propinquity or continuity of kinship that is not always 
the sequence of the probable development; and the question may arise in 
some minds, which of these two relationships is the more important. 
But in most cases the interests may both be as well or better expressed by 
the newer arrangement. Thus in the Paludicole, while the Rallidz are 
certainly the lowest or nearest the Afferyx and the Podicipide, yet in our 
linear arrangement they are not contiguous to either of these groups; but 
since they precede the Limicole, their high position in their own order 
places them rightly as the next of kin to this order above. While this 
may seem a rather ‘natural’ gradation the position of the Jacanide in. 
the Limicole, viewed from either standpoint, seems preposterous, when 
we recall how Ralline is its structure. If we had in our North American 
birds any of the many connecting links that lie between the Limicolz 
and the Herodiones, the Jacanide might be crowded away from the lower 
edge of its order by the stronger claims of these; but our presumption is 
that our list expresses the best sequence of our own birds. 
