592 The American Naturalist. [July,. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Gage's Microscope and Microscopical Methods.'—Some 
years ago we noticed one of the previous editions of this work, prepared 
for the use of the Students of Cornell University. The present, the 
fifth edition, is greatly enlarged and forms a most valuable guide to 
the microscope as an optical instrument, showing the use of each part, 
the means of testing and using it, correcting its faults, ete. Follow. 
ing this portion comes some more special directions for its use in 
spectroscopic and polariscopic work and in photography, together with 
a chapter on the mounting of slides in which every aspect of the sub- 
ject, from the measuring of the thickeness of the cover glass to the 
labelling and storage of the slides is discussed, excepting that the stain- 
ing and sectioning of the specimen is left for a second part which is 
announced as in preparation. This second part will deal with the use 
of the Microscope in Vertebrate Histology, and with the two volumes 
the student will not often meet with questions of technique in this line 
which cannot be answered by referring to this vade mecum. The work 
is well printed and is a credit to Comstock Publishing Company which 
issues it. It is well illustrated with 103 cuts while the fact that every 
_ other page is left blank, allows the student opportunity to add notes. 
The work will doubtless be used in many other laboratories than that 
for which it is especially preparared. 
Shufeldt on Chapman’s Birds of Trinidad.—To the Editors 
of THE AMERICAN NATURALIST: 
DEAR Sirs :—In your issue for April, 1894, p. 332, I find a review 
of a paper by me on Trinidad birdsin which, much to my surprise, the 
reviewer charges me with an attempt to place all but Passerine birds 
in the order Macrochires! I had intended in this paper to give the 
names of the sixteen orders which have representatives in the Trinidad 
avifauna, and under each order the families which most Ornithologists 
now believe to belong in it. Ina vain endeavor, however, to hurry 
my paper through the press before sailing on a second voyage to 
Trinidad, the last half of the copy was unfortunately sent to the printer 
before the slips giving the names of orders and families had been 
1 The Microscope and Mi pical Methods by Simon Henry Gage. Ithaca, 
1894, pp. viii, 165.—$1.50. 
