395 

 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



The Coucs' Check List of North American Birds. Second edition, 

 revised to date and entirely rewritten under direction of the 

 Author, with a Dictionary of the Etymology, Orthography, 

 and Orthoepy of the Scientific Names, the concordance of 

 previous Lists, and a Catalogue of his Ornithological 

 Publications. (Boston : Estes & Lauriat, 1882, 8vo, 

 pp. 165). 



This long title fully indicates the contents of Dr. Coues' 

 latest contribution to ornithological literature, without the two 

 other names with which the binder has ornamented the cover. 

 Work in a fresh field from such an accomplished author is one 

 which all who know Dr. Coues' previous writings cannot hesitate 

 to welcome. The fertility of the writer's pen really seems 

 amazing, when we observe in his Appendix here printed that 

 during the last twenty years he has actually written three hun- 

 dred articles and separate books on birds alone. Yet few writers 

 have done more out-door work than Dr. Coues, and it is mar- 

 vellous how he has found time for so much in the midst of his 

 labours as an army surgeon, and a lecturer on human anatomy 

 in a medical college besides. 



The first edition of the ' Check List ' was published in 

 December, 1873, and it obtained wide currency on its re-issue a 

 month afterwards in connection with the author's well-known 

 • Field Ornithology.' There, however, it was but a bare catalogue 

 of scientific and vernacular titles, while here the list, revised 

 with the utmost care and raised to include 888 species, is en- 

 hanced in value by the addition of explanations of the pronunci- 

 ation and derivation of all the generic and specific names, 

 together with much subsidiary information. We welcome such 

 an addition by an American hand none the less because we know 

 that a somewhat similar treatment of the names of our British 

 birds has been undertaken by Mr. Henry T. Wharton for publi- 

 cation in the anxiously-expected ' Ibis ' List to be issued by the 

 British Ornithologists' Union. It is strange that a work of such 

 interest and utility has never been comprehensively undertaken 

 before, one which will now soon have appeared from both the Old 

 World and the New. 



