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The Woodpeckers. By Fannie Hardy 

 EcKSTORM. Boston and New York. 

 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. i6mo, 131 

 pages; 5 full-page colored plates by 

 Louis Agassiz Fuertes; 21 text cuts 

 by J. L. Ridgway. 



Selecting a group of widely-distributed 

 and easily-identified birds, Mrs. Eckstorm 

 has treated certain of its members, not from 

 the conventional or biographical point of 

 view, but as living object lessons in a study 

 of the relation between structure and habit. 

 There are chapters on courtship, the care 

 of the young, "acquired habits," and a key 

 to the Woodpeckers of North America, but 

 the book deals primarily with the forms 

 and uses of the bill, tongue, feet, and tail. 

 The facts presented bespeak the author's 

 familiarity with her subjects, both in the 

 field and in the study, and she discusses 

 their significance with unusual ingenuity, 

 logic, and facility of expression. The 

 book, therefore, possesses a far greater 

 value than its title would lead us to ex- 

 pect. It forms not only a contribution to 

 our knowledge of Woodpeckers, but is an 

 admirable exposition of methods of obser- 

 vation and presentation in philosophic orni- 

 thology, and as such it should be in the 

 hands of every thinking student. — F. M. C. 



Bird Day and How to Prepare For It. 

 By Charles A. Babcock, A.M., LL.B., 

 Superintendent of Schools, Oil City, Pa. 

 Silver, Burdett & Co. Boston and Chi- 

 cago. i6mo, 95 pages, 16 illustrations. 

 Price 50 cents. 



As the originator of so successful an idea 

 as Bird Day has been proven to be, the 

 author of this book should command an 

 attentive audience. After giving a "His- 

 tory of the Movement for ' Bird Day,' " he 

 writes at length of the value of birds and 

 of their wanton destruction, these chapters 

 being, in effect, reasons for the study of 

 birds. Methods of study are then consid- 

 ered, and are followed by programs for 

 "Bird Day," references to poems on birds, 

 "Objects and Results of Bird Day," and 



notes on sixteen representative birds, with 

 cuts from the Biological Survey publica- 

 tions. 



Professor Babcock writes from an un- 

 usually extended experience; his sugges- 

 tions have all stood the test of repeated 

 trial, and no one interested in the spread of 

 bird study in the schools can afford to lose 

 the benefit of his advice. — F. M. C. 



Bird Portraits. By Ernest Seton- 

 Thompson. With descriptive text by 

 Ralph Hoffmann. Boston. Ginn & 

 Co. 1901. 4to, 20 full-page half- 

 tones, 40 pages text. 



Eight of these "portraits" originally ap- 

 peared in Stickney & Hoffmann's ' Bird 

 World,' and the remaining twelve illus- 

 trated Mr. Torrey's text in the ' Youth's 

 Companion ' for 1900. They are well 

 worthy, however, of republication in their 

 present form, either because of their larger 

 size, more careful printing, or the better 

 quality of the paper here employed. 



Seton-Thompson's distinguishing char- 

 acteristic as a bird artist is a sympathy with 

 his subject, and his representation of it, 

 therefore, is not a mere chart of form and 

 feathers, but a subtly expressed rendering 

 of the bird's own personality, which makes 

 his pictures glow with the true sentiment of 

 bird-life. 



Mr. Hoffmann's text adequately, and, it 

 is needless to say, accurately, sets forth the 

 principal features in the biographies of the 

 species treated. — F. M. C. 



The Ornithological Magazines 



The Auk. — The Auk for April con- 

 tains several readable articles, among them, 

 "Nesting Habits of Lecontes Sparrow," by 

 P. B. Peabody; "Cerulean Warbler * * * 

 in Maryland," by F. C. Kirkwood ; "A 

 Visit to Audubon's Birthplace," by O. 

 Widmann, and "Birds of Prey as Ocean 

 Waifs," by H. W. Henshaw. Mr. Kirk- 

 wood's effort to portray the Cerulean War- 

 bler's song is novel, but as his diacritical 



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