Book News and Reviews 



33 



among the elements of his success were 

 houses placed at least thirteen feet from the 

 ground and with rooms not less than five 

 inches square and six inches high; the de- 

 struction of cats and of about three hundred 

 English Sparrows annually ; and the prose- 

 cution and con'viction of that species of the 

 genus Homo who labors under the delusion 

 that every feathered creature was intended 

 to form a mark for his shot-gun or rifle. 

 We congratulate Mr. Jacobs on his success 

 in protecting his Martins from these, their 

 unnatural enemies, and on his attractive 

 presentation of the results of his studies. — 

 F. M. C. 



A Biological Investigation of the 

 Hudson Bay Region. By Edward A. 

 Preble. N. A. Fauna, No. 22, Divi- 

 sion of Biological Survey, U. S. Dept. 

 of Agriculture, 1902. 



On June 14, 1900, Mr. Preble, accom- 

 panied by his brother, left Winnipeg, and 

 on the 17th reached Norway House. June 

 23, with two Indians for guides, the trip 

 was resumed in a Petersborough canoe, in 

 which they arrived at York Factory, on 

 Hudson Bay. Thence to Fort Churchill 

 they voyaged in a sail -boat. From this 

 point Mr. Preble made a three weeks' boat- 

 trip, and on rejoining his brother at Fort 

 Churchill they at once started on their 

 return trip, Winnipeg being reached Sep- 

 tember 22. This, in brief, is the outline of 

 a trip of over 1,200 miles, attended by 

 no little hardship, and the successful out- 

 come of which may evidently be attributed 

 to no small amount of pluck, endurance 

 and perseverance. 



Mr. Preble's report on his expedition 

 includes a detailed review of the work of 

 previous natural history explorers, and, of 

 course, the results of his own observations. 

 Fifty-seven of the one hundred and thirty- 

 four pages of his report (pages 75-131) are 

 devoted to birds, his list including all the 

 species which have been recorded from the 

 Hudson Bay Province of Keewatin. 



We cannot comment on this list in de- 

 tail; but we can at least commend it from 

 both a field and a study standpoint as a 

 thoroughly good piece of work. — F. M. C. 



The Ornithological Magazines 



The Condor. — Several faunal papers of 

 unusual interest make up the principal con- 

 tents of the November-December number of 

 'The Condor.' Two of these, Grinnell's 

 ' Birds of the Little Sur River, Monterey 

 County,' and W. K. Fisher's concluding 

 paper on ' The Redwood Belt of North- 

 western California,' treat of the peculiar 

 avifauna of the humid coastal region. The 

 former contains an account of the charac- 

 teristic birds seen on a three days' trip, 

 made in July, to a section of Monterey 

 county which is almost unknown ornitho- 

 logically. The latter gives an annotated 

 list of land birds of the redwood belt in 

 Humboldt and Del Norte counties, from 

 which it appears that three subspecies of 

 Song Sparrows {Melospiza cinerea cleo- 

 nensis, M. c. phcea and M. c. morphna) 

 have been taken at Crescent City, in the 

 last-named county. Under the caption ' A 

 List of Birds Collected in Norton Sound, 

 Alaska,' McGregor gives the results of 

 several weeks' work in the summer of 1900. 

 Among the birds collected were three Old 

 World species, the Siberian Yellow Wag- 

 tail, the Willow Warbler and the Wheat- 

 ear, on which the notes might have been 

 considerably extended with advantage. 

 There are many facts in regard to the 

 habits of these birds in Alaska which are 

 important, but most authors apparently do 

 not make an effort to obtain notes on habits 

 or else consider them of little value and give 

 merely a record of the specimens obtained. 



An article on ' The Least Tern at San 

 Diego,' by F. W. Kelsey, illustrated by 

 an excellent photograph of the nest and 

 eggs, and an account of the breeding of 

 'The Holboell Grebe in Montana,' by P. 

 M. Silloway, complete the list of general 

 articles. Mr. Silloway describes, with 

 some detail, a marsh, a square mile or more 

 in extent, at the head of Swan Lake, Mon- 

 tana, which was inhabited by a small 

 colony of some five pairs of Grebes in the 

 summer of 1902. For two weeks or more 

 this area was systematically examined until, 

 as he says, "it appeared to me that I had 

 located [and collected] e'very nest of C. 



