98 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 95 ^ 



Expenditures. 



Printing $ 23.00 



Postage 3.33 



Telephone -25 



Balance on hand, May 5, 1916 188.13 



1214.71 

 Myron H. Swenk, 

 Secretary-Treasurer N. 0. U. 



PUBLICATIONS REVIE\^ED 



Reichenow's Vogel, Vol. ii. 

 (A Review.) 



Having reviewed the first volume of this work in the pages of 

 the Bulletin some time ago the reviewer had hoped to finish his task 

 soon after that, but the second volume was held back in Liver- 

 pool, England, for more than a year, evidently as contraband or 

 for fear it might contain a bomb or picric acid, or what not. But 

 at last it has arrived and we are now able to finish the review. 

 Since the essential points of Reichenow's classification have been 

 disposed of in the previous review, there is no need to go over 

 them again. The second volume begins with the second half of 

 the fifth row Fibulatores, the Musophagidae, Cuckoos, Woodpeck- 

 ers, etc., and then takes up the last row the Arboricolas, running 

 from the Bucerotidse to the Nightingale. Some of the families 

 seem a little out of place in this system as it stands, for instance 

 the Pycnonotidae should certainly have been placed nearer to the 

 Turdidse than they are placed in the work. 



The work at large fills a great want and has many points to 

 commend it. The reviewer has tried to do justice to it in every 

 way, although personally we prefer a phylogenetic system, and 

 if there is anything better than that which Ridgway has produced 

 we have failed to see it. And even then one is sometimes in- 

 clined to wonder whether some time in the future, as Dr. Gill 

 suggested in the Osprey some years since, there will not be a 

 system that will take a still different viewpoint and arrive at 

 still different conclusions. For instance the Fringillidas and Tan- 

 agridse, both nine primaried conirostral birds are separated really 

 only by relative points of difference — as are the Corvidae and 

 Paridae, — while the Ploceidse are certainly conirostral, as anyone 

 may see who will place specimens of Pyrenestes albifrons and 

 Hesperiphona vespertina side by side, but have 10 primaries, and 

 again the Icteridas are nineprimaried conirostral birds, which in 



