222 REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
memoir itself; but some points of general moment may be briefly 
noticed. Mr. Allen describes or’ otherwise records, but without 
naming, “several well-marked geographical races not previously 
chronicled ;” and claims, as unquestionably he may, ‘‘a confirma- 
tion of all the general conclusions arrived at in my [his] recent 
paper on the ‘Winter Birds of East Florida.’” Most of these 
varieties hang apon the law, which we believe Mr. Allen was the 
first to apply to our birds, if not the first to announce, that, other 
things being equal, intensity of coloration varies directly with the 
mean annual rainfall. Its extreme manifestation, in the bleached 
forms of the American desert, have before been noticed.; but its uni- 
versal operation seems to have been hitherto unregarded. Color- 
characters of birds are thus correlated with the three leading surface 
conditions—forest, prairie and desert—and proven due to the 
same meteorological causes. We believe this law to be one of the 
soundest and broadest ever applied to the study of birds. Vari- 
ation in the size of peripheral parts inversely with latitude is a 
second proposition Mr. Allen has elucidated and sustained by 
numerous observations ; its full bearing is probably yet to be deter- 
mined, since for the present it lacks the stability and unequivocacy 
of the other. We find that most of the “ new’ ” geographical races 
noticed by Mr. Allen depend upon one or both of these laws. 
One of the most noticeable, and, its authorship considered, one of 
the most unexpected, features of the present paper is the recog- 
nition of numerous races by namg—a mode of treatment that we 
heartily endorse. As many of our readers know, ever since Mr. 
Allen applied the entering wedge in the locally famous case of 
Turdus Alicice, he has made variation his specialty, and lost no 
opportunity of showing intergradation of forms once considered 
specific. Itis undeniable that, spurred by enthusiasm of discovery 
and zeal of earnest conviction, he occasionally overshot the mark 
— indeed, this present paper shows he is himself aware of this, for 
he has already taken apart some of the crude synonymical lists 
that marred “Florida,” and given a “ name” as well as a ‘‘ local 
habitation” to many varieties he formerly ignored. We believe 
him to be now treading on sure ground, with far less to regret for 
the past than is the common lot of the advocates of innovations 
that mean iconoclasm. The past year has witnessed changes in 
American Ornithology unprecedented since Baird recast the Audu- 
modal, if ngt since Wilson took the subject from European 
