July, 1918 



PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED 



143 



oreganus that has wandered to this south- 

 ern point it is a fact in migration worthy of 

 more emphasis than it has received. It is a 

 pity that in this case at least the author did 

 not discuss more in detail the migration and 

 winter habitat of these particular subspe- 

 cies, for unquestionably New Mexico is far 

 beyond the normal winter range of oreganus. 

 In one place the statement is made that "it 

 is easy to realize that the naming of winter 

 specimens taken perhaps far from their 

 breeding range involves careful matching 

 and measuring of skins and, in a good many 

 doubtful cases, merely clever guessing at 

 the name most applicable." As the type 

 specimen of shufelclti may be admitted to 

 be one of the "doubtful" cases it is ques- 

 tionable if the substitution of the name 

 couesi on the above basis will be at once 

 accepted as a final settlement of the con- 

 neetens-sJiufeldti problem. 



Under J unco oregonus (pp. 293-294) there 

 is a discussion of certain nomenclatural 

 principles (applied in particular to the 

 classification of a large series of breeding 

 birds from Eldorado County, California), in 

 which the author clearly states his attitude 

 toward the naming of individual specimens. 

 In the series in question, taken well within 

 the range of J unco o. thurberi, certain per- 

 centages are declared to be indistinguisha- 

 ble from oregonus and couesi. As the con- 

 clusion of a discussion "whether the name 

 we are using applies to the bird or to the 

 locality," the statement is made that "I do 

 not see how we can escape the necessity of 

 calling a specimen oregonus or thurberi, or 

 any other name, if it shows the characters 

 of the form, no matter where it is taken. We 

 must name a bird by the plumage it is 

 wearing not by the one that it ought to be 

 wearing because it has been captured with- 

 in the bounds assigned to another geograph- 

 ical race." There is room for argument 

 here (personally the reviewer does not 

 agree with the statement made), and ap- 

 parently in the case in question the author 

 has not had the courage of his convictions 

 to quite a sufficient degree to follow them 

 to a logical conclusion, for the ranges of 

 oreganus and couesi are not defined by him 

 so as to include the point from which these 

 specimens were collected. 



In the Junco oregonus group the range of 

 couesi is given as including Vancouver Isl- 

 and. On the map (page 304) showing the 

 distribution of species and subspecies, the 

 dividing line between oregonus and couesi 

 crosses the center of Vancouver Island, an 

 impossible line of demarcation. (Incident- 

 ally it may be pointed out that there is no 

 explanatory caption attached to this map, 

 and that the labels affixed to the ranges of 

 couesi, thurberi and pinosus [3b, 3c, 3d] do 

 not correspond with the lettering used on 

 page 292, which is again different from that 

 near the head of page 291.) Extensive se- 



ries of juncos in the California Museum of 

 Vertebrate Zoology from Alaska, Vancou- 

 ver Island, California and Arizona do not 

 bear out the idea of a race on Vancouver 

 Island different from the Alaska bird and 

 wintering in Arizona. 



After the protest in the introduction that 

 ornithology is "suffering from an indiges- 

 tion of names," the genus Junco in particu- 

 lar having endured much from the preva- 

 lent "tendency hastily to apply names to 

 every sort of variation, letting the facts 

 catch up with the names as best they may", 

 it is a little surprising to find farther on in 

 the paper not only the description of "Junco 

 oregonus couesi'' (which seems to require 

 some additional support beside that here 

 given it) but also the terms "cismontanus" 

 and "transmontanus" (page 295), casually 

 introduced but applied to recognizable birds 

 from specified localities, and hence certain- 

 ly to be taken into consideration in any 

 study of the nomenclature of the juncos of 

 the regions involved! 



The foregoing comments are all made 

 from the point of view of one turning to 

 this paper partly to obtain specific informa- 

 tion, partly from a feeling of interest in the 

 author's viewpoint, and finding, as above 

 specified, various points open to discussion. 

 Of the excellence of the contribution from a 

 philosophic standpoint it is hardly necessa- 

 ry to speak, but a quotation from a review 

 by Edgar Allan Poe on a quite different sort 

 of publication may be taken as expressing 

 the present reviewer's attitude: that excel- 

 lence "is not excellence if it need to be dem- 

 onstrated as such. To point out too partic- 

 ularly the beauties of a work, is to admit, 

 tacitly, that these beauties are not wholly 

 admirable. Regarding, then, excellence as 

 that which is capable of self-manifestation, 

 it but remains for the critic to show when, 

 where, and how it fails in becoming mani- 

 fest; and, in this showing, it will be the 

 fault of the book itself if what of beauty it 

 contains be not, at least, placed in the fair- 

 est light." — H. S. Swarth. 



Catalogue | of | Birds of the Americas 

 and the Adjacent Islands j in Field Muse- 

 um of Natural History | (six lines) | By | 

 Charles B. Cory | Curator of Department 

 of Zoology. | Part n, no. 1, March, 1918, pp. 

 1-315, 1 plate (colored). 



When completed this work will supply 

 bird students for the first time with a com- 

 plete catalogue in check-list form of the 

 birds of the western hemisphere. The spe- 

 cies are listed in the following manner: 

 Scientific name first, with authority, follow- 

 ed by the English name; citations, the ori- 

 ginal description with the type locality, and 

 of a few of the more important references 

 — to works of monographic character, with 

 colored plates, or with important distribu- 

 tional or nomenclatural subject-matter; ge- 



