Recent Literature. 
i6 5 
lines of exploration across the continent to the Pacific, while a special 
survey was made of the boundary line separating the United States and 
Mexico. In the meantime agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company and of 
the Smithsonian Institution had explored the natural history of vastportions 
of the great northern interior, extending from our northern frontier to 
the Arctic Sea. The treasures gathered from this wide area had been 
brought together at the Smithsonian Institution and formed the basis of 
Baird’s monumental work on North American ornithology published in 
1858, forming Vol. IX of “Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a 
Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific.” It is then 
perhaps a matter of little surprise that the 491 species known to Audubon 
in 1839 should have been increased to 760 — an addition of 269 — in 1859. 
In the nearly equal interval (twenty-one years) next following, almost the 
whole of the vast unsettled region west of the Mississippi was explored in 
detail by four regularly organized government surveys, each with their 
ornithological assistants, while officers of the United States Army and 
private collectors added greatly to our ornithological knowledge of pre- 
viously almost wholly unexplored localities, to say nothing of our new 
territory of Alaska, the ornithology of which has now already received 
much attention. The accumulation of material thereby resulting has not 
only added many new forms but thrown much light upon the relationship of 
others, and rendered necessary many changes in nomenclature. In 1859 
we had gathered the first fruits; we now have the mature harvest; but 
there is still doubtless much left for the gleaners. 
The additions made since 1859 are ^ ar ^ ess numerous than those which 
marked the period of twenty years immediately preceding, but the wonder 
is that they are so many rather than so few, when we consider how fully 
the Great West had been explored prior to i860. In comparing the 
present list with that of 1859, the author observes that it “contains 226 
valid species and recognized races which have either been first described 
or added to the North American fauna since 1859, while, on the other 
hand, no less than 42 names of the old catalogue have been relegated to 
the ranks of synonymy, and 20 more removed as extralimital. Further- 
more, of the remaining 698 names over 300 have been more or less 
amended, so that only 395 of the 760 names as given in the old catalogue 
are retained in the current nomenclature!” (oyk cit. p. 7). The “actual 
number of names in the catalogue of 1859 7^4” (*'. 0. 760); in the 
present catalogue (1881), “ 924,” an “apparent increase of 164.” In the 
present catalogue are added 127 species and 99 subspecies, making the 
total, as above stated, of 226 new names. The number of names of the 
old catalogue, or their equivalents, retained in the new. is, species, 637, 
subspecies, 61, making 698 names in a total of 760, or an elimination of 
62. Besides the 62 species wholly eliminated as extralimital or synonyms, 
61 are reduced to subspecific rank, and 100 generic and 89 specific names 
have been changed. In the present catalogue only the species are sepa- 
rately numbered, the subspecies being indicated by letters joined to the 
number of the species to which the subspecies are respectively referred. 
