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Sept, 1916 PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED 207 REVIEWED ?_ STUDY OF OF FEATliaRS, WITH REFERENCE TO THEm TAXONOMIC SI?- NIFICANCE. By C. C?'ANDLER. [Univer- sity of Californi? Publications in Zoology, vol. 13, no. 11, 17, 1916, pp.' 243-446, pls. 13-37, 7 figs.] Except for a ! preliminary pages, the work is divided two portions. Part I, pp. 255-279, is to the "General Morphology" of feather, a large portion of which has compiled from the liter- ature, or at may be found there whether seen by ?handler or not. Though there are some to the literature, .and a appears at the end of the paper, little is shown as to what is 2al and what has been taken from other writers. Furthermore, it is my opinion not all of the papers which should been examined were read carefully if seen at all. In certain cases where credit is given, general text or reference instead of the 'On page 248, word, the "study of need for this word. It and su? ?phyologic" and are sometimes quoted literature. announces. a new as a general term for I cannot see any long and awkward .modifications as "epi- ?iphyological" occur here and there in. the paper. In every case where I have mad ? the attempt, the words feather, plumage, or plumage characters can be substituted ness or explicitnes The following .p..279, in italics: causing the feather structures color is factor for the. the latter is absez with no loss in smooth- that I can discover. appears on The constitutional factor specialization of for the procluction of bound together with the pigment, a?l ff the feather Structures present the norma: t?tpe of the species in which there are ? color modifications." Barbules from the "violet speculum" of an albino mallard examined by Chandler and furnished the for the conclusion thus reached. experience has been otherwise in a .nu: of cases. One of these I have found in the neck feathers of white domestic where pigmented varieties have The highly modified form of barbules in this iri- descent region h was described by me in 1903 is also in white feathers from the same regi, Part II is the portion with a large amount of detailed description of feathers from various birds. There are 25 plates which show many feather structures, mostly barbules from a number of species of birds. For some fifteen years I have believed that plumage characters might be useful in taxonomy, and I have some unfinished work of my own along this line. As stated by Chandler, there are precedents for at- tempting to classify various groups of or- ganisms on the basis of one set of charac- ters. In birds, at least, however, it appears to me unsound to attempt a phylogenetic classification of the great divisions, i.e., the orders and families, with only one set of characters such as variations in feather structure and distribution. Instead of us- ing a single set of such very special char- acters in this detached way, it would be sounder, in my judgment, to compare all known characters, including feather char- acters when these are adequately under- stood. It must be granted that Chandler recog- nizes the need of using all characters, as is indicated in the last sentence of his paper and elsewhere; nevertheless he has fash- ioned a phylogenetic system on feather characters only, so far as his comparisons go. This is described as a modification of the system given by Knowlton and Ridg- way (1909). I can find no evidence in the paper that any characters except those of the plumage have been used directly by Chandler in elaborating his phylogenetic conclusions. As a result of his feather studies, Chand- ler concludes that the ratitc birds are "prim- itively rather than secondarily flightless birds" (p. 388). There is no r?ference to the contrary evidence furnished by the wing and shoulder-girdle bones, for instance; and I am ?ot convinced by his arguments that the feather structures themselves sup- port his position. The Crypturiformes are placed in association with the Galliformes with excellent arguments from their feath- er characters. There are also other argu- ments ?or this arrangement, and 'I would use them all. It has unfortunately been i?npracticable for me to verify the accuracy of the many figures appearing in the plates. So far as I can tell from memory of these structures, however, they are well done. It is my judgment that the descriptive material in this paper, which represents the author's own studies, is a useful contribution to