1893.] Recent Literature. 369 
As for Professor Parker, I can say that I had the honor of being 
one of his constant correspondents for a number of years, and I 
have from him several hundred letters. A year or so before his 
lamented death it was his intention to supplement my work upon ‘the 
“Macrochires,” and I had sent him some material to that end. I 
have letters to show from him that he practically agreed with me in 
the taxonomy of the swifts, swallows and humming-birds, and he pro- 
posed to figure one of the latter “as big as a Cochin-China cock!” It 
is to the loss of the science of systematic ornithology that he never 
lived to accomplish it. Next as to Garrod. My library contains a 
copy of his “ Collected Scientific Papers,” a work I have had occasion 
to refer to almost daily since its appearance. He was disposed to 
classify birds upon altogether too few characters; there is no evidence 
whatever in his work that he ever critically compared the entire strue- 
ture of a humming-bird with that of a swift; he notes simply the fact 
that “ the tensor patagii brevis (in the Cypselide and Trochilide) and 
the pterylosis are characteristic, as is the sternum,” but he failed to 
point out how widely they differed morphologically (p. 222). I dis- 
sent altogether from his views not only upon his taxonomy of the 
Cypseli and Trochili, but also from much else that he has left us upon 
the classification of birds. I must ask Mr. Ridgway for the title of 
any work from the pen of Professor Gadow wherein I may find a crit- 
ical comparison of the entire structure of a swift and a humming-bird. 
I know of none, though I do know, as do many others interested in 
the classification of birds, that at the present time Dr. Gadow is hard 
at work upon probably what will prove one of the best practical 
schemes for the taxonomy of the class, and it will shortly appear. 
He has already done me the great honor in inviting me to submit my 
own views to him on the subject, and in a valuable letter I have just 
received from that able taxonomer I find that he is prepared to admit 
that the goatsuckers no longer should be retained in the same group 
with the forms they have usually been associated with heretofore, and 
he says, “I shall reconsider the position of the Caprimulgide and ele- 
vate them perhaps on account of Steatornis as Caprimulgi, thus 
making the difference from Cypselide and Trochilidæ more marked, 
although I shall not go so far as Fiirbringer has done.” Mr. William 
Brewster, of Cambridge, the distinguished American ornithologist, and 
one of the Committee responsible for the “ Check-List ” of the Amer- 
ican Ornithologist’s Union, and the classification therein set forth, 
having read my contribution to The Ibis (January, 1893) on Swifts 
and Humming-birds, writes me under date of February 13, 1893: “It 
