24 THA AUS s UB ON eB Uebel eae 
to independence, and thereby she has again made an original and significant 
contribution to scientific knowledge. 
Mrs. Nice’s work actually had its origins in her now famous monograph 
on the Song Sparrow. She says on p. 38: “As I watched in 1938 my hand- 
raised Song Sparrows two days out of the nest I was struck with how much 
they resembled day-old Bobwhite chicks.” At first she believed that most 
precocial birds passed through preliminary stages of development (ability 
to perform coordinations concerned with feeding, then comfort movements, 
then escape reactions, etc.) while still in the egg — so that soon after 
hatching, they were able to leave the nest. Her studies soon convinced her 
that only the first stage — coordination concerned with nutrition — is 
passed in the egg, and that the following stages are achieved in a few 
hours or perhaps a day. She concludes: “Assuming then that Stage 1 is 
passed in the egg by precocial birds and that the next two stages may be 
telescoped into hours instead of five days, the development of behavior 
in a Song Sparrow and a Spotted Sandpiper is closely parallel.” 
Many chapters of Mrs. Nice’s book discuss her observations of hatch- 
lings at the Delta Waterfowl Research Station at Delta, Manitoba, from 
1951 through 1954. Here she studied ducklings, killdeer, spotted sandpipers, 
grebes, coots, rails, gulls, terns, and other species. As in her earlier treatises, 
her findings are presented in accurate and meticulous detail: the exact 
hour and minute at which each nestling yawned, stretched, raised its head, 
scratched, vocalized, stood up, walked, pecked, swallowed, etc. In many 
cases she shows the changes in development and appearance by a series of 
line drawings, some covering a span of only a few hours. 
The author also touches on development of behavior patterns in altricial 
birds, correlates size of the yolk sac with degree of precocity, and draws 
comparisons between newly hatched precocials and altricials of an equivalent 
functional age. Probably the most striking contribution in the book is Mrs. 
Nice’s classification of birds according to maturity at hatching. She divides 
precocials into four classes — 1. Independent of parents after hatching; 
2. Follow parents but find own food, as ducks and shorebirds; 3. Follow 
parents but must be shown food, as quail and chickens; 4. Follow parents 
and are fed by them, as grebes and rails — and a class of semi-precocials, 
which stay in the nest though able to walk, as the gulls and terns. 
Similarly, she classifies altricials into semi-altricials 1, down covered, 
eyes open, unable to leave nest, as the herons and hawks; 2, eyes closed, 
as the owls; and true altricials, hatched with eyes closed, little or no down, 
helpless, as all of the passerines. She then presents a table in which she 
classifies all of the orders and most of the families of living birds according 
to degree of precocity or altricity. To this reviewer, the original findings 
and concepts presented by Mrs. Nice in her new book will add to her 
stature as the foremost woman ornithologist of our time. 
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Technical Consultants 
DR. WILLIAM BEECHER, Chicago Academy of Sciences, Chicago 
PHILIP DuMONT, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. 
OLIVER HEYWOOD, Attorney-at-Law, Hinsdale 
DR. THOMAS G. SCOTT, State Natural History Survey, Urbana 
MILTON D. THOMPSON, Illinois State Museum, Springfield 
