296 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 166. 



a man of his age, and one so overwhelmed 

 with work, had the strength and determina- 

 tion to write so much, and the mental clear- 

 ness to write so well. 



Miss Audubon has added to the Missouri 

 Eiver journals a number of footnotes quot- 

 ing descriptions by early explorers — chiefly 

 Lewis and Clark aud Prince Maximilian — 

 of places mentioned by Audubon, thus 

 bringing together on the same page ac- 

 counts of different authors who visited the 

 region at different times. 



Dr. Elliott Coues has supplemented these 

 by another set of footnotes, over his initials, 

 giving modern names of places and other 

 information of geographic and historic 

 interest ; and biographical and zoological 

 notes relating to persons and animals men- 

 tioned in the text. His familiarity with 

 the region described, and with everything 

 relating to its history, as well as with 

 Audubon's books on birds and mammals, 

 has enabled him to contribute materially to 

 the interest and permanent value of the 

 work. He calls attention to the first men- 

 tion in the journals of three new species of 

 birds — Bell's Vireo, Harris' Finch and 

 Sprague's Lark — obtained on this expedi- 

 tion and named by Audubon after his com- 

 panions ; to the difference in song of the 

 western Meadowlark from that of its eastern 

 relative ; and to the absence of any record of 

 the first capture of the then new LeConte's 

 Sparrow, which he learns from the 'Birds 

 of America ' was killed May 24, 1843 ; and 

 so on. 



Now and then he makes a slip, as when 

 he states that the Fox Squirrel mentioned 

 (on page 455 of Vol. I) under the name 

 Sdurus capisti-atus is the one ' with white 

 nose and ears, now commonly called Sciunis 

 niger ' [the latter is confined to the South- 

 ern States ; the one to which Audubon re- 

 fers is the Mississippi Valley Fox Squirrel, 

 S. ludovicianus] ; and when (p. 526) he 

 ascribes to the late Thomas M. Brewer the 



introduction of the English Sparrow into 

 this country. * 



The close scrutiny Dr. Coues gave the 

 text is indicated by the rarity of lost op- 

 portunities. The only really important 

 omission noted relates to a mouse obtained 

 at Fort Union on July 14, 1843, of which 

 Audubon wrote in his journal : " Although 

 it resembles Afus leucopus greatly, is much 

 larger, and has a short, thick, round tail, 

 somewhat blunted " (Vol. II, p. 89). Dr. 

 Coues overlooked the fact that this particu- 

 lar specimen afterward became the tj'pe of 

 Mus missouriensis Aud. & Bach., a species 

 previously described by Maximilian under 

 the name Hypudoeus leueogaster, and later 

 made by Baird the type of the genus 

 Onychomys ; it now stands as Onychomys leu- 

 eogaster (Max. Wied.). 



So much — and yet so little !— has been 

 said of the Labrador and Missouri Eiver 

 Journals that no space remains to speak of 

 the important ' European Journals,' the 

 entertaining ' Episodes ' and the admirable 

 series of portraitsf and other illustrations in 

 Miss Audubon's excellent book — a work 

 which no student of American birds, mam- 

 mals, or history can afford to do without. 

 C. Haet Meeeiam. 



THE IMPORT OF THE TOTEM.X 



In this study of the significance of the 

 Omaha totem the aim will be to set forth, as 

 clearly as possible, first, what these Indians 

 believed concerning their totems, and, 



* The English Sparrow was introduced into the 

 UnHed States in 1850 by Nicolas Pike. Nearly 25 

 years later Dr. Brewer took up his pen in defense of 

 its introduction and from that time until his death 

 was the Sparrow's only friend among American orni- 

 thologists. 



fOne of these, from a painting by Audubon's son, 

 is reproduced as a frontispiece to the present number 

 of Science by the courtesy of the publishers of the 

 work, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. 



% A paper read before the Section of Anthropology, 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, at the Detroit Meeting, August, 1897. 



