NOTES AND LITERATURE. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Bailey's Birds of the Western United States. 1 — It is a great 



Birds of the Western United States. Owing to the diversified 

 nature of the area covered by the book, including the Plains, the 

 Rocky Mts., the Great Basin, and the Pacific Slope, a very large 

 number of species and subspecies had to be treated. There are 

 careful descriptions of the different plumages of each species, an 



followed by short but graphic biographies. In the case of many of 

 the larger birds, the accounts of their habits have been supplied by 

 Mr. Bailey, whose work in the West on the Biological Survey has 

 enabled him to give great assistance. The introduction is evidence 

 of the care with which the book has been planned. It contains 

 directions for collecting birds, accounts of the life-zones and migra- 

 tion in the West, local lists and much other helpful matter. Atten- 

 tion is called to the vertical migration due to the height of the 

 mountains. Certain hummingbirds, for instance, rear a second 

 brood at a higher altitude than the first. There are abundant keys 

 and illustrations. Thirty-three original full page illustrations and 

 many cuts are by Fuertes. Most of these are well up to this artist's 

 high standard. 'Occasionally as in the case of the Mearns' Quail, p. 

 122, and the Pileolated Warbler, p. 428, the effect is marred by 

 the grotesqueness of some unusual attitude. A great many of the 

 small cuts and diagrams with which the book abounds are really 

 illustrative ; it is a pity that so many pages are disfigured by the 

 useless photographs from skins. The students of birds in the West 

 are to be congratulated on now having a handbook which will prove 



