44 THE CONDOR 
the address of some member upon whom ! 
might cali. Some of the most delightful and 
lasting friendships have had their begin- 
nings when, wholly unannounced, some 
Cooper Club member has dropped in at my 
house with the ‘apology’ that he was passing 
through town and had seen my name in 
the Club roster and thought he would look 
me up. The value of this list is perhaps 
greatest to those of us who reside at some 
distance from the Club centers and are 
thereby deprived from attending meetings; 
for through it we can get in touch with 
other sequestered members in nearby 
towns. May the annual roster continue to 
grow until it appropriates not only ten but 
twenty pages of our magazine!” 
A wonderfully interesting sketch of the 
history and accomplishments of the Amer- 
ican Ornithologisists’ Union appears in a 
late issue of The American Museum Journal 
(vol. xvii, 1918, pp. 473-483). This is from 
the pen of Dr. T. S. Palmer, the new secre- 
tary of the Union, and includes among other 
notable features an assembled photograph 
of the founders and officers of the Union 
as they appeared thirty-five years ago. In 
this connection it is a pleasure to be able 
to present herewith a group of certain prom- 
inent A. O. U. members, as photographed by 
Walter K. Fisher at the 1917 A. O. U. meet- 
ing. Three of these, Dr. A. K. Fisher, Mr. 
William Brewster and Mr. Charles F. Batch- 
elder, appeared in the group of 1883. 
Cooper Club members and other ornithol- 
ogists will be interested to learn that a 
movement has been started to establish an 
American Society of Mammalogists. The 
committee on organization consists of Dr. 
Hartley H. T. Jackson, Chairman; Dr. Glo- 
ver M. Allen, Dr. J. A. Allen, Dr. Joseph 
Grinnell, Mr. Ned Hollister, Mr. Arthur H. 
Howell, Mr. Wilfred H. Osgood, Mr. EH. A. 
Preble, and Dr. Walter P. Taylor. Incom- 
pleted plans call for an annual meeting, sec- 
tional meetings, and the publication of a 
magazine of both a popular and technical 
nature. Life histories, ecology, evolution, 
and other phases of mammalogy wiil receive 
attention as well as taxonomy. It is hoped 
that an organization meeting can be held 
this spring (1919). Anyone who desires to 
join or is interested in the organization may 
address the chairman of the committee, U. 
S. Biological Survey, Washington, D. C. 
We are greatly pleased to be able to an- 
nounce that favoring circumstances have 
permitted Mr. W. L. Dawson to again take 
up work on his Birds of Caiifornia. The 
preparation of the text is now well under 
way, the gathering of the material for illus- 
tration having already been practically com- 
pleted. 
Vol. XXI 
Avifauna no. 13 has gone to press—a 
pretty convincing piece of evidence that 
good times are indeed returning. This num- 
ber is J. R. Pemberton’s Second Ten Year 
Index to The Condor. The question has 
been raised as to the propriety of publish- 
ing such an index as one of the Avifauna 
series, instead of separately. Without go- 
ing into the reasons here, it has seemed on 
the whole best to follow the precedent set 
when the first ten year index was issued, 
namely to give it a number in the Avifauna 
series. 
PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED 
A REVIEW OF THE ALBATROSSES, PETRELS, 
AND DIVING PETRELS [being contribution 
number 12 based upon the expedition of the 
California Academy of Sciences to the Gala- 
pagos Islands, 1905-1906], by Leverett MILs 
Loomis. -Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., 4th ser., vol. 
2, pp. 1-187, pls. 1-17; issued April 22, 1918. 
We learn from the “historic sketch”, 
which comprises chapter one of the paper 
under review, that Elliott Coues, of all pre- 
vious authors, has contributed most import- 
antly to our systematic knowledge of the 
Tubinares. His work, in the light of later 
developments, has proven most scholarly; 
yet the chief of his contributions was pub- 
lished in 1864 and 1866, when he had not yet 
attained his twenty-fourth year. Loomis 
thus at the outset pays appreciative tribute 
to the chief of his predecessors in the field 
he has chosen for his own special study. 
Under the heading “geographic distribu- 
tion’, among the more striking generaliza- 
tions is that barriers to pelagic species of 
birds are to be found in the limits of food- 
producing areas. While there is good rea- 
son for recognizing control by temperature 
also, a third factor of importance concerns 
historical circumstances. Loomis divides the 
oceanic portion of the earth’s surface into 
“distribution areas’, classified into three 
different grades, namely, swperarea, area, 
and subarea, based on the occurrence of spe- 
cies at their breeding stations. These areas 
are demonstrated on the basis of the Tubin- 
ares of the world. Of the subareas there are 
twenty-five all told, and one of these is the © 
“Californian Subarea”, with six diagnostic — 
species. 
The subject of migration is gone into at 
some length. Interesting cases are de- 
scribed, of the long “transequatorial” emi- 
grations of several of the shearwaters from 
the South Pacific to the North Pacific. There 
are also regular emigrations, though less ex- 
tended as a rule, of species from the north- 
