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July, 1918 PUBLIATION$ REVIEWED 145 oreganus that has wandered to this south- ern point it is a fact in migration worthy of more emphasis than it has received. It is 'a pity that in this case at least the author did not discuss more in detail the migration and winter habitat of these particular subspe- cies, for unquestionably New Mexico is far beyond the normal winter range of oreganus. In one place the statement is made that "it is easy to realize that the naming of winter specimens taken perhaps far from their breeding range involves careful matching and measuring of skins and, in a good many doubtful cases, merely clever guessing at the name most applicable." As the type specimen of shufeldti may be admitted to be one of the "doubtful" cases it is ques- tionable if the substitution of the name couesi on the above basis will be at once accepted as a final settlement of the con- nectens-shufeldti problem. Under Junco oregonus (pp. 293-294) there is a discussion of certain nbmenclatural principles (applied in particular to the classification of a large series of breeding birds from Eldorado County, California), in which the author clearly states his attitude toward the naming of individual specimens. In the series in question, taken well within the range of Junco o. thurberi, certain per- centages are declared to be indistinguisha- ble from oregonus and couesi. As the con- clusion of a discussion "whether the name we are using applies to the bird or to the locality," the statement is made that "I do not see how we can escape the necessity of calling a specimen. oregonus or thurberi, or any other name, if it shows the characters of the form, no matter where it is taken. We must name a bird by the plumage it is wearing not by the one that it ought to be wearing because it has been captured with- in the bounds assigned to another geograph- ical race." There is room for argument here (personally the reviewer does not agree with the statement made), and ap- parently in the case in question the author has not had the courage of his convictions to quite a sufficient degree to follow them to a logical conclusion, for the ranges of oreganus and couesi are not defined by him so as to include the point from which these spectme?!s were collected. In the Junco oregonus group the range of couesi is given as including Vancouver Isl- and. On the map (page 304) showing the distribution of species and subspecies, the dividing line between oregonus and couesi crosses the center of Vancouver Island, an impossible line of demarcation. (Incident- ally it may be pointed out that there is no explanatory caption attached to this map, and that the labels affixed to the ranges of couesi, thurberi and pinesus [3b, 3c, 3d] do not correspond with the lettering used on page 292, which is again different from that near the head of page 291.) Extensive se- ries of juncos in the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology from Alaska, Vancou- ver Island, California and Arizona do not bear out the idea of a race on Vancouver Island different frpm the Alaska bird and wintering in Arizona. After the protest in the introduction that ornithology is "suffering from an indiges- tion of names," the genus Junco in particu- lar having endured much from the preva- lent "tendency hastily to apply names to every' sort of variation, letting the facts catch up with the names as best they may", it is a little surprising to find farther on in the paper not only the description of "Junco oregonus couesi" (which seems to require some additional support beside that here given it) but also the terms "cismontanus" and "transmontanus" (page 295), casually introduced but applied to recognizable birds from specified localities, and hence certain- ly to be taken into consideration in any study of the nomenclature of the juncos of the regions involved! The foregoing comments are all made from the point of view of one turning to this paper partly to obtain specific informa- tion, partly from a feeling of interest in the author's viewpoint, and finding, as above specified, various points open to discussion. Of the excellence of the contribution from a philosophic standpoint it is hardly necessa- ry to speak, but a quotation from a review by Edgar Allan Poe on a quite different sort of publication may be taken .as 'expressing the present reviewer's attitude: that excel- lence "is not excellence if it need to be dem- onstrated as such. To point out too partic- ularly the beauties of a w. ork, is to admit, tacitly, that these beauties are not wholly admirable. Regarding, then, excellence as that which is capable of self-manifestation, it but remain? for the critic to show when, where, and how it fails in becoming mani- fest; and, in this showing, it will be the fault of the book itself if what of beauty it contains be' not, at least, placed in the fair- est light."--H. S. SWARTH. CATALOGUE [ or ] BIRDS or THE AMERICAS AND THE ADJACENT ISLANDS I IN FIELD MUSE- UM OF NATURAL I-IISTOl?Y I (six lines) I By CI-IARLES B. CORY I CURATOR OF DEPARTMENT or ZOOLOGY. I Part ii, no. 1, March, 1918, 1-315, 1 plate (colored). When completed this work will supply bird students for the first time. with a com- plete catalogue in check-list form of the birds of the western hemisphere. The spe- cies are listed in the following manner: Scientific name first, with authority, follow- ed by the English name; citations, the ori- ginal description with the type locality, and of a few of the more important references --to works of monographic character, with colored plates, or with important distribu- tional or nomenclatural subject-matter; ge-