56 
Recent Literature. 
New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, a part of the State of Colorado, and 
some of Southern California.” The surface of the region is greatly varied, 
and the climate presents extremes equalled in no other area of similar 
extent in the United States. The region is not only walled in by high 
mountain ranges, but embraces chains and peaks*that nearly reach the line 
of perpetual snow ; yet the greater portion is low, and includes some of 
the hottest and most arid portions of the continent. The influence of such 
highly diverse conditions leaves its impress upon animal and vegetable 
life, so that here are developed among the birds modifications of coloration 
and structure of special interest. Here, too, the birds “ find their summer 
and winter homes, and perform their migrations rather according to ‘ the 
lay of the land ’ than with reference to degrees of latitude.” 
The two hundred and eighteen pages of “ Bibliographical Appendix ” 
with which the work closes is by no means the least important part of the 
volume. Although so extended, embracing about fifteen hundred (though 
the author incorrectly says “ nearly or about one thousand ”) titles, it is 
restricted to a “ List of Faunal Publications relating to North American 
Ornithology,” being “ the North American section of the ‘ Faunal Publica- 
tions ’ series ” of a general “ Bibliography of Ornithology,” upon which the 
author has been for some years engaged. The scope and plan of the 
present instalment of the work is explicitly stated by the author to include 
“ titles and digests of works and papers relating solely to Birds of North 
America indiscriminately, collectively, or in general. In short, the titles 
are those that relate to the Birds of North America as such, — not as com- 
ponents of any genus or family.” Hence are excluded all monographs, all 
general treatises on birds of larger areas, even if including North Amer- 
ica, and all general works on ornithology. “ By this means,” the autho^ 
adds, “ the scope of the present article is conveniently narrowed and ren- 
dered perfectly definite ; and only in a few instances, for one or another 
particular reason, is the rigidity of the rule of exclusion relaxed.” The 
bulk of the titles hence consists of “ local lists ” and articles of an allied 
character, but embraces a range of publications from the works of Wilson 
or Audubon down to the “ least note ” on the subject, with also the re- 
views and notices that relate to them. A few titles are included upon 
arbitrary grounds, but perhaps come as naturally here as elsewhere. Con- 
trary, however, to what one might expect in a list of faunal publications, 
records of the capture of single species, as, for example, the Lark Finch or 
the Lark Bunting in Massachusetts, do not here find a place. Although 
an inconvenient omission, the explanation is obvious, when we reflect that 
this list of titles is only one division of a general work, in which the titles 
are systematically classified under perhaps a hundred or more different 
heads, and where references to single species, whatever the character of 
the reference, are entered under family headings ; the instances cited 
hence coming under “ Fringillidce ” in the general scheme of arrangement, 
although strictly faunal in character. On the other hand, a paper chroni- 
