Book News 
Survey is demonstrated in an impressive 
way by this brief review of its labors dur- 
ing the past year. 
The division of Economic Mammalogy 
and Orthology has completed bulletins on 
the house rat, ground squirrels, wolf and 
coyote bounties, mammals of the arid 
interior, muskrats, deer farming and Cali- 
fornia birds in relation to agriculture; and 
it has in preparation others on Wood- 
peckers, Flycatchers, shore birds, and the 
food of wild Ducks. 
Special field investigations were made 
among the field mice of Nevada (where the 
efforts of a Survey, seconded by those of 
Hawks, Owls, Gulls and coyotes has reduced 
the number of field mice from some 12,000 
an acre to five or six per acre), and in relation 
to fencing sheep from wolves and coyotes, 
on ditch-boring mammals, the depreda- 
tions by kangaroo rats, and moles, the 
relation of birds to the boll weevil, the 
English Sparrow in southern California, 
on birds in relation to wheat aphids and 
on the diseases of wild Ducks. 
In the Division of Geographic Distribu- 
tion field work was carried on in New 
Mexico, Utah, Georgia, Alabama, Mis- 
sissippi, Tennessee and South Carolina. 
The Division of Game Protection has 
rendered a most effective service through 
the distribution of its bulletins on game 
protection and propagation, and its work 
in connection with Bird Reservations, now 
51 in number, and its supervision of the 
importation of foreign mammals and birds. 
The ‘Outline of Work for Igto0’ shows 
no indication of decrease in the activity of 
this Bureau which indeed is rendering an 
increasingly effective service to the public. 
Pe MEIC. 
The Ornithological Magazines 
THE AuK.—The January number opens 
with an illustrated paper by Dr. C. W. 
Townsend and Mr. A. C. Bent, entitled 
‘Additional Notes on the Birds of Labra- 
dor.’ Forty species of water birds and 
fifty-three of land birds are listed,—a 
goodly number for a desolate region where 
birds are scarce. In this connection it is 
and Reviews 39 
of interest to read, on another page, of 
“Audubon’s Labrador Trip of 1833,’ by 
Mr. R. Deane, who has pleasantly brought 
together a recent letter from Dr. Wm. 
Ingalls, the only surviving member of the 
party, and one from Audubon himself, 
written while in Labrador. 
In contrast to the bleak Labrador 
country, we read of ‘One Hundred Breed- 
ing Birds of an Illinois Ten-mile Radius,’ 
which Mr. 1. E. Hess records in Champaign 
county. Mr. W. F. Henninger has notes 
on a few rare birds of Ohio, illustrating 
his article with photographs of the King 
Rail; while some winter birds of Wayne 
county, Michigan, are recorded by Mr. J. 
C. Wood, and others, of Ottawa, Canada, 
by Mr. G. Eifrig. 
Several photographs of the nests of the 
Arizona Hooded Oriole accompany an 
article on “The Palm-Leaf Oriole,’ by 
Mrs. F. M. Bailey. The birds frequent, 
it is true, the fan palms so extensively 
planted for ornament along the streets 
of southern California towns; but in ver- 
nacular names the utmost conservatism 
should prevail, and it is to be observed 
that on one of the photos appears “‘Palm- 
Leaf” and on the other ‘‘ Hooded,” 
neither of which is the distinctive “Ari- 
zona,’ by which name this race has always 
been known. The most that can be asked 
of a vernacular name is that it be dis- 
tinctive,— its appropriateness is quite 
another matter. 
Dr. L. B. Bishop describes ‘Two New 
Subspecies of North American Birds,’ 
a Long-billed Curlew (Nwmenius ameri- 
canus.parvus) and a Cowbird (Molothrus 
ater dwighti), both races being carved from 
material representing the extreme northern 
limits of familiar species, although the 
Curlew is nearly extinct in the East. 
Messrs. A. H. Wright and A. A. Allen 
submit data on ‘The Increase of Austral 
Birds at Ithaca’ (N. Y.). It is well to re- 
member that the apparent increase of 
birds of a given area is frequently the result 
of more careful observations, sometimes 
combined with lucky discoveries, and noth- 
ing is more difficult than securing a bird 
census that is worth while. 
