1870. ] Recent Literature. 517 
have been made through his exertions, and fully elaborated in the 
reports of the surveys to which he has been so long and so use- 
fully attached, either by himself alone or in connection with Dr. 
H His operations having been mainly in New 
Mexico, Arizona and California, it has remained for others to do 
the like good service in Texas, and especially in the fruitful val- 
ley of the Lower Rio Grande, where so many Mexican birds 
intrude upon our own territory. The three prominent workers 
in this field of late, are Mr. George B. Sennett, late of Erie, Pa., 
Dr, James C. Merrill, U.S. Army, and Lieut. C. A. H. McCauley, 
3d U. S. Artillery. 
When, in 1841, the late J. P. Giraud published his sixteen new 
species of birds from “ Texas,” the decidedly sub-tropical cast of 
the fauna of some parts of Texas was not fully recognized, and 
much doubt was felt that all these birds really came from their 
accredited locality. They have, however, been mostly rediscov- 
ered over our present border, and the true character of the bird- 
worked farther north and west, in a region which, though not 
well known ornithologically, was not to be expected to yield 
Mexican novelties. His paper, however, gave precision if not 
ments Dr. S. W. Woodhouse’s observations, published in 1853, 
with fresh and more extended notes on the habits and distri- 
bution of various species. 
Mr. Sennett spent two months in the early spring of 1877 on 
the southern border of Texas, from the mouth of the great river 
to about a hundred miles inland; working with an assiduity that 
merited the large measure of success achieved, Mr. Sennett made 
an extensive collection, backed by copious field notes, and pub- 
lished? his results the following year. Containing a great store 
of fresh observations well worked up, this paper attracted muc 
‘Notes on the Ornithology of the Region about the Source of the Red River of 
Texas, etc. Bull. U. S. Geol. and Geog. Surv. Terr., Vol. 111, No. 3, May 15, 1877, 
PP. 655-695. 
? Notes on the Ornithology of the Lower Rio Grande of Texas, etc. Bull. U. S. 
Geol. and Geog. Surv. Terr., Vol. rv, No. 1, Feb. 5, 1878, pp. 1-66. 
: * Leptoptila albifrons, a Pigeon new to the United States Fauna. Bull. Nutt. 
Ornith. Club, Vol. 11, No. 2, July, 1877, pp. 82, 83. ~“ ; 
