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206 THE CONDOR VoL. XI! The scientific value of the present paper can- not be over-emphasized. We have here col- lected an enormous aggregation of authenti- cated records, indicating with far greater precision than anything publisht before the breeding and winter habitats and the routes of migration of the 85 recognized species of Limicolae known t;) occur in North America. The author is able from this mass of data to present many generalizations of remarkable interest and wide significance. The more important of these conclusions are that many waders pursue an annual course of migration in the path of an ellipse, returning north by an entirely different and remote route from that trayerst on the southern journey; that some species lengthen their migratory travels so that they are carried 7000 or even 9000 miles from their breeding grounds, mak- ing their winter homes in extreme southern South America; that certain species make sin- gle flights without resting of at least 21)00 miles. Gunners are held responsible for a large part of the decrease in the numbers of our shorebirds; and yet other causes are operative, some of which. it is probably not practicable to remove. The Eskimo Curlew altho formerly abundant in fall on the New England coast and in spring thru the Mississippi Valley is rapidly approach- ing extinction, if indeed any still exist. A simple explanation of this, offered by Profes- sor Cooke, is that during recent years the for- met winter home of the Eskimo Curlew, in Argentina, has been settled and cultivated, while its spring feeding grounds in Nebraska and South Dakota have been converted into farn? land. This same cause is doutless the chief basis for the change in numbers of many of our birds. Of local interest to Californians is the prob- ably unique migration route taken by those Mountain Plover which winter in the Sacra- mento Valley and southward into the San Diegan district. "The farthest west anti north that the species is known to breed is Montana; hence whether the California wintering birds come from Montana or from the more southern districts, they apparently form an exception to the general rule that North American birds do not winter farther west than they breed." A bird new ?o California, here for the first time recorded, is the Upland Plover, a speci- men of which was taken by Vernon Bailey at Tule Lake, Aug?st 8, 1896.--J. GRINNELL. NOTES ON NEw ENGLAND BIRDS, By HENRY D. THOREAU; arranged and edited by FRANCIS It. ALLEN, with eleven illustrations from pho- tographs of birds in nature and a map of Con- cord, Mass., showing localities mentioned by Thoreau in his JOURNAL. Houghton Mif- flin Company, Boston, 1910, pp. ix + 452; price $1.75 net. "soattered through the fourteen volrunes of Thoreau's published JOURNAL are many inter- esting notes on the natural history of New England anti a large proportion of these relate to birds. In the belief that readers and students would be glad to have these bird notes arranged systematically in a single ?vol? ume, this book has been prepared. ' ? ? It was, indeed, as a describer rather than as an observer that Thoreau excelled. He never acquired much skill in the diagnosis of birds seen in the field. He never became in any re- spect an expert ornithologist, and some of the reasons are not far to seek. He was too intent on becoming an expert analogist, for one thing. It better suited his genius to trace some anal- ogy between the soaring t?awk and his own thoughts than to make a scientific study of the bird. Moreover his fiehi, including.as it did all nature, was too wide to admit of specializa- tion in a single branch." These words from the editor's preface ex- plain fully the nature and scope of this book. These are not the complete records from the Journal, but only "those seeming to have some intrinsic value, whether literary or scien- tific-using both terms in a liberal sense." The notes were made between the years 1845 and 1860, principally between 1853 and the latter date, and cover some 115 species, besides general and miscellaneous notes (species un- identified). It is an interesting contribution to the liter- ary side of ornithology and should have some value to the student also.--H. T. CLIFTON. A [ MONOORAl'?I I oF T?E PETRELS [ (Or- der Tubinares) By FREDERICK DU CANE GODMAN[ D. C. L. F.R.S. I President of the British Ornithologists' Union [ With hand- coloured Plates I by J. G. Keulemans I Wither- by & Co. I 326 High Holborn London [ 1907- 1910. Large 4to (10x13 inches), pp. i-lvi, 1-381, col. pll. 1-103. Price complete, bound, fifteen guineas. - Part V of this work reacht us the last of May (1910), and brings to a wholly satisfactory conclusion the undertaking so elaborately begun four years ago. (See reviews in this umgazine for 1908, p. 96, 1909, p. 72.) Part V comprises the remainder of the Tubinares not previously treated, namely, the albatrosses. Also: the full title page for the whole work (given above); the Preface; Introduction; chap- ter "On the Systematic Position of the Petrels", by ?r. p. Pycraft; Systematic List of Species; List of Plates; Classification; Imlex.--J. G. LIFE oF ] WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY [ [etc., 3 lines] [ By WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAV, W. S. I Author of "Rob Lindsay and His School," etc. [ With a Scientific Appreciation [ By J. Arthur Thompson ] [etc., 1 line] with illustrations [ [quotation] I London l John Murray, Albe- marle Street, V?'. 1910 8vo., pp. i-xvi, 1-222, 12 plates. Price 10 6. Those who find interest in h?storical bio- graphy will undontedly obtain much plesure by reading the life of MacGil- livray, the full title of which is given above. It was MacGillivray, a Scotchman, that Audu- bon secured to help him write the technical portions of his Ornithological Biography. The name is familiar to even the youngest students of American birds thru its being borne by at least two of our birds, a warbler and a sparrow. The book in hand tells among otl{er things of the felicitous cooperation maintained between two men for nine years, the time occupied in