498 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1273 



sion, but it may be doubted whetlier the med- 

 ical profession as a wbole has fully realized 

 its responsibility to the public in this matter. 

 The unscrupulous agitation, which has at 

 length come so perilously near to achieving an 

 instalment of its purpose, has been aided' by 

 the prevalent ignorance of the public, and by 

 the power of appeal to a sentiment which is 

 strongly developed in all Englishmen — in med- 

 ical men as in others. The dog has estab- 

 lished a proper claim on man's sympathy and 

 affection, and the public have the right to in- 

 quire whether its use for experiment is es- 

 sential for the progress of medical science, 

 and to be satisfied that the practise involves 

 no significant amount of pain. The mate- 

 rials for assurance on both points are in the 

 hands of every medical man who has thought 

 about the matter and has made himself ac- 

 quainted with readily accessible facts. The 

 Research Defence Society has done valuable 

 work, but the ordinary man or woman has 

 more confidence in the friend with expert 

 knowledge than in the publications of so- 

 cieties. He has the right to expect that his 

 feelings, harrowed by an insistent campaign 

 of misrepresentation, shall not be treated 

 merely with good-humored tolerance. The 

 plain facts of the case are easily made clear, 

 and would be accepted by the vast majority 

 of laymen from the medical advisers whom 

 they trust. If lay opinion had not been left 

 so much at the mercy of a mendacious agita- 

 tion, it is incredible that even a tired and 

 apathetic remnant of the House of Commons 

 would have allowed this bill to pass its second 

 reading almost without discussion. — The Brit- 

 ish Medical Journal. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Game Birds of California. Contribution 

 from the University of California, Museum 

 of Vertebrate Zoology. By Joseph Grinnell, 

 Harold Child Bryant and Tracy Irwin 

 Storer. University of California Press, 

 Berkeley, 1918. Large 8vo. Pp. i-x + 1- 

 642, 16 colored plates and 94 text-figures. 

 Price, cloth, $6.00 net. 

 While the conservation of the wild game of a 



state is one of the most important problems 



with which the commonwealth has to deal, it is 

 rarely that it receives the expert attention that 

 it should and that is usually possible. Too 

 often the fish and game committees of the leg- 

 islature and the game commissions are com- 

 posed of men who are merely sportsmen, in- 

 terested of course in the preservation of game 

 according to theories that they as shooters of 

 game have conceived, but not cognizant of the 

 more fundamental principles which only the 

 trained zoologist or conservationist under- 

 stands. 



California is to be congratulated upon secur- 

 ing the services of such competent zoologists as 

 Dr. Grinnell and his associates at the Univer- 

 sity of California — ^Dr. Bryant and Mr. Storer 

 — in preparing this admirable volume upon the 

 game birds of the state. 



The plan of the work is well conceived and 

 is carried out with a painstaking regard for 

 accuracy and uniformity of treatment. Under 

 each species we have full descriptions of the 

 various plumages, with special emphasia on 

 " marks for field identification," the call notes, 

 nest and eggs are then described and a state- 

 ment of the distribution of the species in gen- 

 eral, as well as in California, is added. Then 

 follows a general account of the life history of 

 the bird, its food, actions, etc., with now and 

 then pertinent extracts from the works of vari- 

 ous authors. This systematic portion of the 

 work naturally forms the bulk of the volume, 

 and is a repository of information which will 

 benefit readers far beyond the boundaries of 

 California, since the list of game birds of the 

 various states of the union includes many of 

 the same species, and Dr. Grinnell and his as- 

 sociates have spared np pains in gathering to- 

 gether all the information that was to be had. 

 The published literature and manuscript rec- 

 ords have been exhaustively studied and the 

 museums of the whole country have been vis- 

 ited in order to secure descriptions of the 

 various plumages that game birds present at 

 different ages and seasons. 



The earlier chapters of the work discuss 

 the more general problems of game preserva- 

 tion and their careful study by those framing 

 game legislation in all parts of the union wiU 

 be well worth while. 



