5 2 
Recent Literature. 
L January 
Gentians and the bright scarlet Cardinal Flowers. These are favorite 
haunts of the Canada Jay and, in the autumn, of immense flocks of 
Robins that come to feed upon the handsome berries of the mountain 
' ash trees that always skirt the open places, easing, the stiff edge of the 
bordering forest.” 
The section devoted to botany is occupied chiefly by nominal lists of 
the common forest trees, undershrubs, and smaller flowering plants of 
the Adirondacks. For the shrubs and smaller plants the scientific names 
alone are given, and these, printed as “solid matter,” fill the greater part 
of two pages with italics, — a most unfortunate arrangement from a typo- 
graphical point of view. 
In the seventh section Mr. Merriam considers the faunal position of 
the Adirondacks and concludes that the region pertains to the Canadian 
Fauna. In support of this conclusion he cites the presence of such 
“eminently northern” mammals as the Lynx, Fisher Marten, Hudsonian 
Flying Squirrel, Jumping Mouse, Long-eared Wood Mouse, Porcupine, 
and Northern Flare ; and among birds, the breeding of the “Hermit Thrush,' 
Swainson’s Thrush, Red-bellied Nuthatch, Winter Wren ; Tennessee, 
Yellow-rumped, Blackburnian, Black and Yellow, Mourning, and Canada 
Flycatching Warblers ; White-winged and Red Crossbills, White-throated 
Sparrow. Junco, Rusty Blackbird, Raven, Canada Jay, Olive-sided 
Flycatcher, Black-backed and Banded-backed Three-toed Woodpeckers, 
Spruce Grouse, Goshawk, and Golden-eyed Duck.” From these lists, how- 
ever, we should strike out the Jumping Mouse, Long-eared Wood Mouse, 
Northern Hare, Hermit Thrush, and Olive-sided Flycatcher, all of which 
occur too numerously in the Alleghanian Fauna to be regarded as typical 
Canadian forms. 
There is a list, also, “of ‘Subarctic’ species of Lepidoptera collected in the 
immediate vicinity of Beaver Lake,” and a provisional list of plants 
which the author regards as “fairly characteristic of a Canadian Flora.” 
Chapter II occupies eighty pages and carries the subject through Car- 
nivora in Mammalia. At? a contribution to our knowledge of the habits, 
food, times and manner of breeding, etc., of many of the northern mam- 
mals this paper i^an important one, for the life-history of each species 
is given in the fullest manner, and usually from data supplied by the 
author’s experience or that of equally careful observers among his 
acquaintances and friends. 
Original matter of this kind has an interest and value immeasurably 
above that of the most able compilation, and it is doubly attract- 
ive when, as in the present case, it is presented in simple, concise, 
and hence forcible English. Not that our author’s style is above criticism ; 
on the contrary his sentences are sometimes loosely constructed, and he too 
frequently makes use of expressions which, to say the least, are undigni- 
fied and in bad taste. He shows a tendency, also, to over-positiveness, 
especially in the discussion of questions about which there may still be 
room for a fair difference of opinion. These faults, however, are neither 
serious nor irremediable, and they are not likely to weigh heavily against 
