Sept., 1921 
Mr. John W. Mailliard is at work upon 
a revised list of the birds of the Lake Tahoe 
district of east-central California, to be pub- 
lished in an early issue of the Conpor. Mr. 
J. R. Pemberton has in preparation an arti- 
cle on the breeding birds of the southern 
coast district of Texas. Mr. Laurence M. 
Huey has spent a portion of the summer 
collecting vertebrates in the White Moun- 
tains, Mono County, California, in the inter- 
ests of Mr. Donald R. Dickey. 
PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED 
MATHEWS AND IREDALE’S MANUAL OF AUS- 
TRALIAN Birps*.—This is to be a _ well-or- 
dered, down-to-date, and complete systematic 
compendium of the ornithology of Australia, 
ii standards set in volume |! prove to be 
niaintained to the end of volume IV as 
announced. Efforts have been made to con- 
dense a great amount of information into 
small space, with eminent success it seems 
to the reviewer. The diagnoses of genera 
and higher groups are based on the latest 
researches, the synonymies are adequate, 
and the descriptions of the species are full, 
including appropriate consideration of the 
various plumages, nest, eggs, breeding sea- 
son, incubation period and distribution. A 
special feature is the reduction of mention 
of subspecies to within the text of a para- 
graph with side-head “Distribution and 
forms”. The bold-face headings have to do 
with full species only. While 188 full spe- 
cies are thus formally treated in the present 
volume, nearly 700 subspecies are given the 
brief form of mention indicated. 
The Introduction contains short but sug- 
gestive essays on “nomenclature”, “classifi- 
cation’, and ‘“‘zoogeographical distribution’”’. 
A thing emphasized in discussing classifica- 
tion is the short-coming of morphologists 
generally, in each giving overweight to the 
structural features with which he happens 
to be dealing. Thus one man has constructed 
his system of classification on the skeleton, 
sometimes upon only one portion of the 
skeleton; another man has emphasized pe- 
culiarities of the circulatory system; anoth- 
er, pterylography; etc. Mathews and Ire- 
dale are undoubtedly warranted in their 
*A Manual of the Birds of Australia by 
Greogry M. Mathews and Tom Iredale, illus- 
trated with [10] coloured and [36] mono- 
chrome plates by Lilian Medland. Volume I 
{four volumes to complete the work], orders 
Casuarii to Columbae. H. F. & G. Witherby, 
326 High Holborn, London, [March 9,] 1921. 
Crown 4to, art canvas, gilt top, pp. xxiv-+ 279, 
illustrations as above. [Price £3 3s. per 
volume. ] 
EDITORIAL NOTES AND NEWS 171 
complaint of one-sidedness on the part of 
most previous taxonomists. Their own ef- 
forts have been towards reducing the evi- 
dence from all available sources to a fair 
level, and building the classification here 
presented accordingly. The authors resent 
the casual ‘excursion’, as they call the 
basis of the average contribution to avian 
morphology, as compared with the long-con- 
tinued type of study upon which chiefly will 
the stable classification of the future de- 
pend. This is a point the reviewer is prone 
to complain of, himself: Many current con- 
tributions to ornithology are “theses” from 
persons who have worked in a given field 
but two or three years, and who rarely ever 
again publish upon the same subject. 
Several of the colored plates show natal 
and juvenal plumages and serve to bring 
out a principle made much of by the authors, 
namely, that young plumages are to be given 
great weight in indicating phylogeny in 
birds—more weight relatively than many 
adult structures such as have been assigned 
great importance by most previous taxono- 
mists. 
Our comments upon the general text will 
concern some of the matter relating to Am- 
erican ornithology or American ornitholo- 
gists, and hence most likely to be of inter- 
est to the majority of CoNpor readers. 
Under “Fleshy-footed” Shearwater 
(Hemipuffinus carneipes), of which it is 
stated four subspecies have been indicated, 
it is further remarked that (p. 29) “This 
species has been procured off the coast of 
California, and Loomis’s measurements sug- 
gest that this is a larger race still.” In 
other words there is a possibility that the 
Flesh-footed Shearwaters visiting the ocean 
off California come from some _ breeding 
ground as yet unknown, but not necessarily 
south of the equator at all, as once inferred 
by Loomis from the facts then known to 
him. Here is a case where careful subspe- 
cific discrimination would be of service. 
Under Sooty Albatross (Phoebetria fusca) 
the following statement (p. 49) occurs: 
“Nichols and Murphy contrasted Mathews’s 
measurements with their own; but we would 
point out that their method of measuring 
is unknown to us and we cannot reconcile 
any of their figures with our own data.” 
The reviewer has not verified this; but can 
it be that any modern writer on technical 
ornithology has failed to indicate so clearly 
just how his measurements were taken that 
his figures are not intelligible to a worker 
in another part of the world? 
