NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
This is the first volume of what will be a very large work, and there is little doubt that it will be completed; for American enterprise is to-day beyond any other in zoology, thanks to a fostering government. The faunistic area dealt with is from the Arctic Lands to the Isthmus of Panama, the West Indies, and other Islands of the Caribbean Sea,[1] and the Galapagos Archipelago. This publication will be considered a fragment in the years to come, when the "Birds of America" will be written—from the Arctic Lands to Patagonia, for that must be the America of the future, if political destinies ever cast a preliminary shadow.
Mr. Ridgway defines ornithology as comprising two distinct studies—systematic or scientific, and popular. The scientific is stated to deal with the structure and classification of birds, their synonymies, and technical descriptions. The "popular" is estimated as treating "of their habits, songs, nesting, and other facts pertaining to their life-histories." Believing science, as long since taught, to be "organized common sense," we should prefer to call both these phases of study scientific ornithology—the one technical, the other bionomical. The systematic problem has been abundantly considered by Mr. Ridgway, and much is advanced that is new. In the Fringillidæ, Dr. Sharpe's Coccothraustinæ, Fringillinæ, and Emberizinæ are estimated as "so-called subfamilies" and "unnatural groups." From such questions, which must be left to the ultimate decision of the higher criticism, we may at least glance at some others. It is to be regretted that the author recognizes "trinomials" as a "necessary evil," and, as a logical sequence, the Cardinal Grosbeak is referred to as
- ↑ Except Trinidad and Tobago.
