June 5, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



841 



University of Michigan on June 24tli. Ad- 

 dresses will be made by Dr. W. T. Harris, U. 

 S. Commissioner of Education, and Prof. J. O. 

 Murray, of Princeton University. 



The University of Nebraska holds a summer 

 school at Lincoln, from June 8th to July 3d, in- 

 tended especially for teachers, principals and 

 superintendents of the State. The courses of 

 special interest to students of science are those 

 offered in botany by Prof. Bessey and in physics 

 by Prof. Brace. It is the intention of the Uni- 

 versity to offer next year courses in those subjects 

 omitted this year. Thus, in 1897 zoology and 

 chemistry will probably be offered in the place 

 of botany and physics. 



The Board of Overseers of Harvard Univer- 

 sity have elected Theobald Smith, M. D., pro- 

 fessor of comparative pathology ; Charles Hu- 

 bert Moore, A. M., professor of arts and di- 

 rector of the Fogg Art Museum; Lewis Jerome 

 Johnson, A. B. , C. E. , assistant professor of civil 

 engineering, and Comfort Avery Adams, Jr. , S. 

 B. , assistant professor of electrical engineering. 



Of the ten fellows nominated by the faculty 

 of the University of Wisconsin only one is in 

 the pure sciences — C. H. Bunting in biology. 



Peof. W. Whitman Bailey, of Brown Uni- 

 versity, has been appointed by President Cleve- 

 land, a member of the Board of Visitors to the 

 United States Military Academy at West Point, 

 where, it will be remembered, his father was 

 many years professor, and where he himself 

 was born February 22, 1843. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



'progress in AMERICAN ORNTTHOLOGY, 

 1886-95. ' 



To THE Editor of Science : In the Ameri- 

 can Naturalist for May, of the present year, 

 there appeared a contribution of mine entitled 

 'Progress in American Ornithology, 1886-95,' 

 and in a recent issue of Science (No. 73, pp. 

 777-779) Dr. J. A. Allen has undertaken to re- 

 ply to such parts of that article as he considers 

 to be of a critical nature as applying to the 

 Committee of the American Ornithologist's 

 Union, which prepared the last edition of the 

 ' Check List of North American Birds. ' In the 



present rejoinder I beg to assure my distin- 

 guished reviewer, at the outstart, that my 

 article in the American Naturalist was not 

 prompted through a spirit of ' animus, ' as he 

 seems to think, and that my ' reference to the 

 starling clearly reveals that animus ' is, surely, 

 too ridiculous to be entertained even for a 

 moment. Dr. Allen charges me with having 

 overlooked ' the main purpose of the new 

 Check List, which was the revision of the 

 matter relating to the geographical distribution 

 of the species and subspecies.' This omission 

 was entirely intentional upon my part, and I 

 preferred to leave it to other and more com- 

 petent reviewers who have kept pace with that 

 division of the subject during the last ten years, 

 and who are for that reason far better prepared 

 to deal with it than I am, who have not made 

 any special attempt in that direction. That I 

 did not refer to the matter of geographical dis- 

 tribution is any evidence that I uuderated its 

 value is, to say the least, a curious inference. 

 Upon similar grounds I might have been 

 charged with underating the value of certain 

 technicalities in scientific nomenclature, and of 

 the necessity of typographical precision in the 

 new 'Check List,' for I had nothing to say 

 about them, and intentionally so. Other review- 

 ers will doubtless turn their attention to such 

 matters, and for the enlightenment of the A. 

 O. U. Committee, and the consequent progress 

 of American ornithology, point out the short- 

 comings in these premises likewise. Indeed, 

 in The Nidologist for April of this year, a very 

 good step has been taken in this direction. 

 Through the assistance of the review to which 

 I refer, I am prepared to say that I feel I have 

 quite as much right to allow Burrica to appear in 

 my article as Barrica, to which Dr. Allen has 

 invited my attention, as he and the A. O. U. 

 Committee have to spell ' probably ' ' prop- 

 ably,' or Greenland with three e's, as they have 

 in the new Check List (pp.221 and 321). 



Dr. Allen has at last given to avian tax- 

 onomers a reason, the reason perhaps, why the 

 A. O. U. Committee adhere so persistently to 

 the superantiquated classification of birds to be 

 found in the last Check List. It is because ' the 

 species are numbered in an orderly sequence ' 

 and ' of the still very unsettled state of the sub- 



