Recent Literature. 
2 37 
requirements of that class of readers for whom they are presumably 
intended, while the biographical passages, although containing little that 
is new, are always apt and interesting. The references to previous 
records, as might be expected, form a marked feature; in the case of the 
more important species, especially, they are so accurately collated, so 
dispassionately weighed, and so conveniently grouped that they cannot 
fail to render the work of the utmost value to even the most advanced 
student of the subject. There are no new features of classification, but 
it will be noticed that the nomenclature has in most cases been arranged 
in accordance with some important changes which have been recently 
proposed. The illustrations are fairly numerous, mainly technical in 
character, and all taken from Dr. Coues’s previous works. 
It is, of course, not to be expected that such a book will be entirely free 
from errors, especially when we consider the fact that its editor (who, it 
should be stated, announces himself “ responsible for the accuracy and 
completeness of the work ”) has had little personal experience with New 
England birds as such. Those which do occur usually affect the breeding 
distribution of the birds to which they relate. In most cases this is made 
out with great judgment and in strict accordance with known facts, but 
where the positive evidence is incomplete there are indications that the 
editor occasionally gave free scope to his prophetic fancy. This running 
ahead of the records is a dangerous business, despite Dr. Coues’s masterly 
argument in defence of “logical deductions” and the “logical results of 
ratiocination.” Birds, like many other beings, sometimes take it into 
their heads to be erratic, and thus disappoint the prophets in various ways. 
It is not alvrays safe to base a positive general statement on one or two 
exceptional occurrences, while it is even more hazardous to fill absolute 
blanks from the analogy furnished by known parallel cases. This may 
be appropriately demonstrated by considering some of the following 
quotations from “New England Bird Life.” 
Turdus pallasi . — “The Hermit Thrush is another bird whose breeding 
range draws a line between the two principal Faunae of New England, 
being restricted in the breeding season to the Canadian Fauna, as the 
Wood Thrush is to the Alleghanian.” In point of fact, the Hermit Thrush 
breeds regularly in Massachusetts at many places in Essex and Mid- 
dlesex Counties, and on Cape Cod in abundance. Authenticated nests 
have been taken at Gloucester, Beverly, and Concord, while in June and July 
we have heard many males singing near Hyannis, Marston’s Mills, and 
Osterville. Its distribution in the breeding season, so far from being, 
as is elsewhere stated, closely coincident with that of Swainson’s Thrush, 
is rather to be compared with that of the Olive-sided Flycatcher, which 
breeds generally and most abundantly throughout the Canadian Fauna; 
locally and sparingly, but still regularly, in the Alleghanian, and perhaps 
occasionally just within the northern boundary of the Carolinian. 
Regulus calendula . — The Ruby-crowned Kinglet, given as “one of the 
many birds which mark the distinction between the Canadian and Alle- 
ghanian Faunae, being apparently limited by the former in its southward 
