Page:Bird-lore Vol 05.djvu/48

 Book News and Reviews 33

among the elements at his success were houses placed at least thirteen feet from the ground and with rooms not less than ﬁve inches square and six inches high; the de- struction of cats and of about three hundred English Sparrows annually; and the prose» cution and romrirtinn of that species of the genus Hlmm who lahors under the delusion that every feathered creature was intended to form a mark for his shot-gun or rifle. We congratulate Mr. Jacobs on his success in protecting his Martins from these, their unnatural enemies. and on his attractive presentation of the results of hi F. M. Cr

studi

A BIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION trr HUDSON Bar Rccinp. By Enwun A, PREBLE. N, A, Fauna, No. 22, Divi~ sion of Biological Survey. U. S. Dept, of Agriculture, r902.

‘th

On June rs. I900. Mr. Preble, accom— panied by his brother. lctt Winnipeg. and on the r7th reached Norway House June 23. with two Indians for guides. the trip was resumed in a Petersborough canoe, in which they arrived at York Factory, on Hudson Bay, Thence to Fort Churchill they voyaged in a sail-boat. From this point Mr. Prehle made a three weeks' boat- trip. and on rejoining his hrnther at Fort Churchill they at once started on their return trip, Winnipeg being reached Sep- tember 22. This. in brief. is the outline of a trip ot over r,zoo miles. attended by no little hardship, and the successful nut- comc of which may evidently be attributed to no small amount of pluck, endurance and perseverance.

Mr, Preble's report on his expedition includes a detailed review of the work of previous natural history explorers, and, of course, the results of his own observations. Fifty-seven or the one hundred and thirty. tour pages of his report (pages 7571;” are devoted to birds, his list including all the species which have been recorded from the Hudson Bay Province of Keewatin.

We cannot comment on this list in der tall; but we can at least commend it from both a ﬁeld and a study standpoint as a thoroughly good pier: of wort—F. M. c.

The Ornithological Magazines

'I‘Hr; CoNDox.—Several faunal papers of tlnusual interest make up the principal con- tents ot the November-December number of ‘The Condor,‘ Two of these, Grinnell’s “Birds of the Little Sur River, Monterey County.’ and w, K, Fisher‘s concluding paper on ‘The Redwood Belt ot North, western California.‘ treat of the peculiar avifauna of the humid coastal region. The former contains an account of the charac- teristic birds seen on a three days’ trip. made in July, ro a section of Monterey county which is almost unknown ornitho» logically. The latter gives an annotated list of [and birds of the redwood belt in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. from which it appears that three suhspecies or Song Sparruus (Mr-lurpiza l'illn'ra clone ninth, Ill. (. [VIII/I and in. c. "map/"ml have been taken at Crescent City, in the last-named County. Under the caption ‘A List of Birds Collected in Norton Sound. Alaska.‘ MrGregor gives the results or several weeks' work in the suinmcrot rooo. Among the birds collected were three Old World species, the Siberian Yellow \Vagr tail, the Willow Warbler and the \Vheat- ear. on which the notes might have been considerably extended with advantage. There are many facts in regard to the habits of these birds in Alaska which ale important, but most authors apparently do not make an el-lort to obtain notes on habits or else consider them of little value and give merely a record of thc specimens obtained.

An article on ‘The Least Tern at San Diego.’ by Fr w. Kelsey. illustrated by an excellent photograph of the nest and eggs. and an account of the breedng at ‘The Holhcell Grebe in Montana.‘ by P. M. silloway, complete the list of general Mr. Silluway describes, some detail, a marsh, a square mile or more in extent, at the head of Swan Lake. Mona tana. which was inhabited by a small colony of some live pairs or Grehes in the

articles with

summer of 1902. For two weeks or more this area was systematically examined until. as he says, "it appeared to me that I had

located [and collected] puny nest or L‘.