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iSooft J^etDs; ant) 9^ebietD0 The Woodpeckers. By Fanme Hardy EcKSTORM. Boston and New York. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. i6mo, 131 pages; 5 full-page colored plates by Louis Agassiz Fuertes; 21 text cuts by J. L. RiDGVVAV. Selecting a group of widely-distributed and easily-identified birds, Mrs. Eckstorm has treated certain of its members, not from the conventional or biographical point of view, but as living object lessons in a study of the relation between structure and habit. There are chapters on courtship, the care of the young, "acquired habits," and a key to the Woodpeckers of North America, but the book deals primarily with the forms and uses of the bill, tongue, feet, and tail. The facts presented bespeak tiie author's familiarity with her subjects, both in the field and in the study, and she discusses their significance with unusual ingenuity, logic, and facility of expression. The book, therefore, possesses a far greater value than its title would lead us to ex- pect. It forms not only a contribution to our knowledge of Woodpeckers, but is an admirable exposition of methods of obser- vation and presentation in philosophic orni- thology, and as such it shoiiUi be in the hands of every thinking student. — F. M. C. Bird Day and How to Prepare For It. By Chari.es A.Babcock, A.M., EL.B., Superintendent of Schools, Oil City, Pa. Silver, Burdett & Co. Boston and Chi- cago. i6mo, 95 pages, 16 illustrations. Price 50 cents. As the originator of so successful an idea as Bird Day has been proven to be, the author of this book should command an attentive audience. After giving a "His- tory of the Movement for ' Bird Day,'" he writes at length of the value of birds and of their wanton destruction, these chapters being, in effect, reasons for the study of birds. Methods dI stmlv :ire tluii consid- ered, and are lollowed by programs for "Bird Day," rrtercnces to poems on birds, "Objects and kcstilts of Bird Da ," aixi notes on sixteen representatie birds, with cuts from the Biological Survey publica- tions. Professor Babcock writes from an un- usually extended experience; his sugges- tions have all stood the test of repeated trial, and no one interested in the spread of bird study in the schools can afford to lose the benefit of his advice. — F. M. C. Bird Portraits. By Ernest Seton- Tho.mpson. With descriptive text by Ralph Hoffmann. Boston. Ginn Sc Co. 1901. 4to, 20 full-page half- tones, 40 pages text. Eight of these "portraits" originally ap- peared in Stickney & Hoffmann's ' Bird World,' anil the remaining twelve illus- trated Mr. Torrey's text in the ' Youth's Companion ' for 1900. They are well worthy, however, of republication in their present form, either because of their larger size, more careful printing, or the better quality of the paper here employed. Seton-Thompson's distinguishing char- acteristic as a bird artist is a sympathy with his subject, ami his representation of it, therefore, is not a mere chart of form and feathers, but a subtly expressed rendering of the bird's own personality, which makes his pictures glow with the true sentiment of bird-life. Mr. Hoffmann's text adeijuatel)', and, it is needless to say, accurately, sets forth the principal features in the biograpliies of the species treated. — F. M. C. The Ornithological Magazines The Auk. — The Auk for April con- tains several readable articles, among them, "Nesting Haliits of Lecontes Sparrow," by P. B. Peabodv; "Cerulean Warbler * * * in Maryland." i F. C. Kirkwood ; " . isit to .Xuduiion's liirthplace," by O. Widinaiin, and "Birds of Prey as Ocean Waifs," bv II. W. Ilenshaw. Mr. Kirk- wood's erfoil t>« pi>iir;i ilu' Cerulean W'ar- i)ler's sonu; i< iiumI, but aN his diacritical