Publications Reviewed 
47 
Filling as it does the need for a clearing house of ornithological 
observations, the Biological Survey at Washington has evolved a system 
of indexing and cross-indexing its records and notes which is very effect- 
ive. The writer, on a recent visit to Washington, was initiated into the 
well worked out scheme of card indexing by Dr. Oberholser, whom he 
suspects had a good deal to do with the development of the plan. A 
room 12 x 16 is fitted with card index cases on three sides. One section 
of these cases contains records by species, another shows records by 
states, and each in turn is subdivided as between the observations of 
members of The Survey and the records of other observers. Published 
records are included as well as those gleaned from manuscript sent in 
by correspondents. Another feature is the map case. In this, a lith- 
ographed map sheet of the United States is assigned to each species and 
subspecies and graphically thereon is shown, by means of symbols, the 
recorded occurrence of the bird in question as a breeder, transient, win- 
ter visitor, etc. The system is susceptible of unlimited expansion and 
deserves a more extended description than can be given here. 
PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED 
Notes on the Birds of Carroll, Monroe, and Vigo Counties, Indiana. By 
Barton Warren Evermann. Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of 
Science, 1920, pp. 315-401. 
A feature of exceptional interest in this paper is the length of the 
period over which the records extend, for few local lists are published 
with observations by the same observer dating from the present time as 
far back as 1877. The loss, by fire, deplored by the author, of most of 
his notebooks prior to 1888, was indeed a serious one, but the data re- 
maining were certainly worthy of permanent record. 
The three counties covered are all in west-central Indiana, though 
not adjoining one another. Two hundred and thirty-seven species of 
birds are listed. The treatment is mainly with regard to the manner of 
occurrence of the species concerned, but scattered through the accounts 
there are also notes descriptive of habits and mode of life, or, as under 
the Red-headed Woodpecker, of some original manner of securing speci- 
mens or abating a nuisance. 
It is a matter of some wonder that the author, amid engrossing In- 
terests and far removed from the scene of his earlier bird studies, could 
find the time and the enthusiasm to place on record these valuable ob- 
servations.— H. S. Swarth. 
