ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
31 
Nnu ||flrk 2oologtral Unirutg 
OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY 
<IA PUBLIC ZOOLOGICAL PARK. «J A PUBLIC AQUA¬ 
RIUM. «J TII E PRESERVATION OF OUR NATIVE 
ANIMALS. Q TH E PROMOTION OF ZOOLOGY. 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
Published bi-monthly at the Office of the Society. 
Ill Broadway, New York City. 
Copy, 25 Cents Yearly, $1.50 
MAILED FREE TO MEMBERS 
Si BSCB1PT10N AND EoiTOHIAI. OFFICES 
ZOOLOGICAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY 
Elwin R. Sanborn, Editor 
Copyright. 1923. Oy the New York Zoological Society. 
DriiartmriiiE: 
Mammals Aquarium 
William T. Hornaday Charles H. Townsend 
Birds Reptiles 
Lee S. Crandall. Raymond L. Ditmars. 
William Bf.ebf. Honorary Curator, Birds 
Each author is resnonsible for the scientific accuracy and 
the proof reading of his contribution. 
Vol. XXVI March, 1923 No. 2 
The author, M. Victor Forbin, an eminent 
journalist of Paris, is an active member of the 
New York Zoological Society and worthy cham¬ 
pion of the Society’s work in France and the 
continent.— Ed. 
MEMBERSHIP OF THE SOCIETY 
The following persons were elected members of the 
Society, January 11, 1923, and February 8, 1923, by 
the Executive Committee: 
January 11, 1923 
Annual Members 
Mrs. Ernest B. Dane 
Dr. George Vail Edwards 
Howard M. Morse 
Rev. Paul J. Sandalgi 
E. Phillips Burgess 
Frank E. De Long 
T. T. McCabe 
Edward A. Norman 
Miss Jane Stillman 
Frederick H. Meserve 
February 8 9 1923 
Life Members 
William G. Bibb John Gamble Rogers, Jr. 
Ann i 
Kenneth Boardman 
C. H. Rice 
Mrs. Jeannette C. Curtis 
Dr. G. Clyde Fisher 
Miss Helaine Magnus 
Mrs. Judson Morgan 
Mejnbers 
Clarence C. Vernam 
John M. Glenn 
James- Walter Carter 
Mrs. F. C. De Veau 
H. M. Imboden, M.D. 
Robert Mallory, Jr. 
W. Smyth 
THE FINAL VOLUME OF “A MONO¬ 
GRAPH OF THE PPIEASANTS” 
Illustrations from Volume IV of “A Monograph of the Pheasants” 
A N intelligent and warm-hearted historian 
recently remarked “History writing is a 
slave to drv-as-dust methods.” The criti¬ 
cism has been heeded of late, as some of the 
recent books go to prove. In scientific writing, 
however, the vivid portrayal of facts is now 
coming to be an old story. Centuries ago, 
Lucretius in parts of “De Rerum Natura” and 
Pliny the Elder in “Naturalis Historia” led the 
way with their profound recitals of natural 
phenomena. In recent times, Darwin and Fahre 
have given the world accounts running a scien¬ 
tific gamut from voyages around the world to 
ants, full of observation and of a nature so in¬ 
teresting that the most hidebound commercialist 
of today reads with an absorption and interest 
almost unknown to himself. In the writing of 
a monograph, dealing as it must with every 
eomplete and final detail of a single subject, 
with no scientific technicalities left untouched, 
what chance is there, asks the layman, for either 
the author or the reader ? But in monographic 
writing a new leaf has now been turned. 
William Beebe’s fourth and final volume of 
“A Monograph of the Pheasants” has just been 
received from the publishers, a worthy climax 
to what lias gone before. It is difficult to realize 
that a subject that is handled with the utmost 
scientific precision and detail throughout can he 
made replete, at the same time, with the colour 
and life that is found only rarely in hooks of 
exploration or travel. Mr. Beebe has made 
possible this dual result by including in the 
description of each species a brief word picture 
called “the bird in its haunts.” 
The volume deals in the main with some of 
the better known members of the pheasant 
family, of which the peafowl is perhaps the 
most patrician. Whether this adjective is ap¬ 
propriate to a bird may perhaps be questioned, 
yet the Magna Charta and the Mayflower prob¬ 
ably seem very modern to Juno’s companion. 
The species dealt with are somewhat fewer in 
number than those appearing in the earlier 
volumes. The well-known and gorgeous golden 
pheasant, together with its close and no less 
beautiful relative, the-Lady Amherst pheasant, 
are first introduced; cousins, which though liv¬ 
ing near to each other in western China and 
eastern Tibet, and though originally descended 
from the same stock and entirely fertile inter se 
in captivity, yet have never been known to 
interbreed in the wild. Then, the family of 
peacock pheasants, some species of which arc 
