142 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 630 



William J. Gies {secretary) , AValter Jones, 

 Waldemar Koch, John Marshall, Lafayette 

 B. Mendel (treasurer) and Thomas B. Os- 

 borne. 



No plans have been made for a meeting 

 before next December, although the council 

 was authorized to use its discretion in this 

 and all other matters affecting the welfare 

 of the society. William J. Gies, 



Secretary 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Bird: Its Form and Function. By C. 

 William Beebe, Curator of Birds, New 

 York Zoological Park. New York, Henry 

 Holt & Co. 1906. 8vo. Pp. 496, with 

 over 370 illustrations. 



This book is ' intended as an untechnical 

 study of the bird in the abstract ' and tells of 

 the structure and characteristics of birds, 

 dwelling especially upon the adaptations of 

 the various organs to their uses, and their 

 bearing on the relationships and past history 

 of birds. It thus covers ground that has been 

 but little worked, for while there are books a 

 many on the anatomy of birds, these, with 

 the exception of Headley's ' Structure and 

 Life of Birds,' are purely descriptive and fail 

 to show the relations of a bird's structure to 

 its surroundings and mode of life. Here we 

 are told why a beak, a foot, a wing, is of a 

 given shape, what role it plays in a bird's 

 daily life, or, if its present use is not obvious, 

 what hint it gives of a bird's past history 

 when the part now useless was all-important. 

 The first chapter, devoted to the ancestors 

 of birds, of necessity recapitulates what is 

 already known — what we do not know will 

 fill volumes still to be written. We would, in 

 passing, dissent from the statement that 

 Archseopteryx ' frequently walked or ran on 

 all fours,' and if Mr. Beebe will make a figure 

 of the animal in such a position be will doubt- 

 less appreciate the diJEculties in the way. 

 Next is a long chapter on ' Feathers,' in- 

 cluding their origin, structure, development, 

 arrangement and moult, and this is followed 

 by a discussion of ' The Framework of a 

 Bird,' the skull being given a chapter by itself. 



Much information as to color and color 

 changes will be found under the caption ' The 

 Body of a Bird,' where some good illustra- 

 tions are given of the effects of food, light 

 and moisture, one of the most striking being 

 the very dark form of the white-throated spar- 

 row, produced by exposvire to moisture-laden 

 air through two moults. So, part by part, 

 the bird is considered in detail, the final chap- 

 ter treating of ' The Bird in the Egg.' Under 

 ' The Eggs of Birds ' we learn of the eggs 

 themselves and of the information that may 

 be gathered from them when studied in con- 

 nection with the habits of the bird that laid 

 them. For " That which adds the greatest 

 interest to anything is the ' why ' of it, and 

 a vast collection of eggs, beautiful though they 

 are, yet if ignorantly looked at is worse than 

 useless. Why one bird lays twenty eggs and 

 another but two; why one bird's eggs are 

 white, another's of varied colors, we will never 

 learn from blown museum specimens." It has 

 been denied that oology is a science, but 

 whether it is or is not depends on the indi- 

 vidual and it is to be hoped that this chapter 

 may aSord fruitful suggestions for future 

 work on the part of our younger ornithologists. 

 The chapters on Wings and Beaks and Bills 

 are among the best because Mr. Beebe, who is 

 a keen observer, has here combined the re- 

 sults of his experience in the field, and of the 

 opportunities offered by having many species 

 of birds continually under his observation in 

 the New York Zoological Park. In regard to 

 beaks we are told that " The finding and se- 

 curing of food being the most important prob- 

 lem birds have to solve for themselves, it is 

 for these purposes, and especially the last 

 mentioned, that we find bills most adapted. 

 This is so imiversally the case that we may 

 often judge accurately of the kind of food of a 

 certain bird from a glance at its beak." 



It is impossible that a book of this nature, 

 where much information is crowded into a 

 small space, should be entirely free from 

 errors, and here and there slips occur. Thus 

 we are told that Amphioxus has biconcave 

 vertebrae, after having been correctly informed 

 that the backbone is represented by a mere 

 thread of gristle; that the moa was found in 



