Recent Literature . 
179 
mology, and pronunciation of all the scientific words, — a thing never done 
in this country before. — Eds.] 
Gentry’s Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Pennsylvania. — 
Part. I of this new enterprise, published last April, has reached us, con- 
taining descriptions, with a colored plate, of the nests and eggs of Ampelis 
cedrorum and Contopus virens. It is designed as a popular work, to be 
characterized by scientific excellence combined with moderate price. The 
text of this number is meritorious, and the plates are not. It is, however, 
too early to judge the character which the publication, should it proceed, 
may assume ; we wish here to simply record the fact of the publication 
of such a work. We are bound to add, however, that, as we assured the 
intending author when he submitted to us his plans, there is no particular 
raison d'etre in this case, and little prospect that the enterprise can success- 
fully compete with the two of similar scope now in progress, — Ingersoll’s, 
and Jones and Shulze’s. Should the author, as is most probable, have 
any new facts of value and interest to communicate, they might properly 
form papers in some scientific serial, or, preferably still, be incorporated 
with a revised second edition of his excellent “ Life Histories of the Birds 
of Eastern Pennsylvania.” It goes against our grain to wet-blanket any 
ornithological endeavor, but we have no alternative in this case. — E. C. 
Ober’s Camps in the Caribbees. — We have already had occasion 
to notice in these pages several papers by Mr. Lawrence, in the Proceedings 
of the National Museum and elsewhere, on the results of Mr. Ober’s ex- 
ploration of the Lesser Antilles, which was undertaken in 1876 under the 
auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, for the special purpose of elucidating 
the little known ornithology of those islands. We recur to the subject to call 
attention to the work recently published by Lee and Shepard,* containing 
Mr. Ober’s own narrative of his experiences in the Caribbees in quest of 
new and rare birds. The general text introduces a good deal of ornitho- 
logical matter, which will be found of interest and value, and the ap- 
pendix is entirely devoted to this subject. It gives Mr. Lawrence’s sum- 
mary list of the species, 128 in number, collected by Mr. Ober, with the 
geographical distribution of each, in tabular form, and also reproduces the 
original descriptions of all the new species discovered by the energetic and 
successful explorer. — E. C. 
Roberts on the Convolution of the Trachea in the Sand- 
hill and Whooping Cranes. — In a paper f of seven pages Mr. Rob- 
erts has given an admirable presentation of the tracheal characters of our 
two larger species of Cranes, illustrated with cuts. In Grus canadensis 
* Camps in the Caribbees : The Adventures of a Naturalist in the Lesser An- 
tilles. By Frederick A. Ober. Boston: Lee and Shepard. New York: Charles 
T. Dillingham. 1880. 8vo. pp. xviii, 366, with 34 illust. 
t The Convolutions of the Trachea in the Sandhill and Whooping Cranes. 
American Naturalist, Yol. XIV, February, 1880, pp. 108 -114, Figg. 
