iS83.] 



CouEs's Compliments of the Season. 



Langille of Buflalo had completed a work upon New York 

 Birds ; and that the new "-Avifauna Columbiana," to be published 

 with illustrations vmder the auspices of the Biological Society of 

 Washington, had gone to press. This was cool, considering 

 that Dr. D. W. Prentiss and ourselves were the authors of the 

 work, as we informed him, and accepted his apology. In fact 

 the only graceful things the saucy gossip had to say were respect- 

 ing the "Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio," which work he 

 hoped would meet with all the success it so well deserved. 



Our little visitors 

 seemed in some 

 hurry to be oft' 

 whe# our next cal- 

 ler was announced. 

 Surnia v/as polite 

 if? and dignified, as 

 ^ usual. He had 

 5. heard, he said, that 

 we were about to 

 ^publish a new edi- 

 tion of the "Key," 

 which he trusted 

 would be much 

 more handsomely 

 illustrated than the 

 former one, and, as 

 his own contribu- 

 tion to that end, 

 offered us a strik- 

 ing likeness of 

 himself. He re- 

 marked with grim humor that as the plan of the work included 

 a treatise on the anatomy of birds, he was at our service for any 

 dissections we might wish made. But this being rather a deli- 

 cate subject, the conversation turned upon late catalogues and 

 nomenclators of Nortli American Birds. Surnia complained with 

 some warmth, that, like the old woman in Mother Goose, he 

 hardly knew whether he was himself or somebody else. He 

 begged to suggest the propriety of calling a Congress of American 

 Ornithologists to discuss, vote upon, and decide each case in which 



