Page:Condor13(1).djvu/37

 Jan., 1911 PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED 37 such a work as the one proposed. Photographic processes and niethods of reproduction have now reached a stage of perfection which makes the full anti artistic representation of our bird- life not only desirable but imperative. There is, so far as we have been informed, no promise of any other such work in the reasonably near future. Yet the popular in. terest in birds is really very great. It is undevelopedi' latent, often unintelligent indeed, but it is really more powerful aml ulore nearly universal than many of us who follow ornithology as a hobby or as a science are aware. A work addressed to this larger public will be of the greatest value, not only in the direct service of that public, but in guaranteeing a more intelligent considera- tion of the legislative anti protective measures anti in arousing a more eady support for' nmseunm and other scientific institutions. Mr. Dawson ' is the nmn to do this work in Califor- nia and we rejoice at his coming. We own we are a little dazed by the brillian- cy of the program outlined by the author: edi- tions tie lnxe, anti illustrations on a scale of magnificence rarely if ever before attempted in the history of American bird-book making; but Mr. Dawson made good in Washington, both as a writer and as a book-builder, anti there is no reason that we can see why he shonhl not achieve success here in California. Mr. Dawson's plans have been enthusiastical- ly ratified in open meeting by both divisions of the Cooper Club; and the Club is pledged to extend to the new enterprise its fullest moral support. The name Of the Club is to be associ- ated with that of the.author upon the title page of "The Birds of California" and the work is to be, in so far as it is possible, a cooperative one. With characteristic energy the author launched the canvas for the new work in San Francisco immediately upon receiving the Club's endorsement and under 'the patronage of the Messrs. Mailliard has succeeded in enlisting enough influential silpport to assure a good be- ginning anti to justify the expectation of a general public interest. He has now gone to Pasadena and Los Atigeles to develop the local interest there, and expects at the close of a six weeks campaign to complete the organization of The Birds of CalifOrnia Publishing Company which is to finance the new undertaking. In a succeeding issue of this magazine we shall expect Mr. Dawson to set forth in detail the scope amt specifications of the proposed work, as well as to tell us more particularly Row Cooper Club members may cooperate. PUBLICATIONS REVIEWEl) .N'OTES ON THE BIRDS OF PIMA COUNTY, ARIZONA. By STEPlIEN SARGENT VISHER. [From ]rhe /uk, vol. XXVIl, July 1911}, pp. 279-288.] This list of 127 species covers a part of the gronnd that was treated in great detail by W. E. D. Scott in The .4uk for 1886-88, and is pub- lished partly for the purpose of adding several species not included in Scott's list, and largely (according to the introduction) with "the de- sire to add a mite to the far too nieagre knowl- edge of the habits and songs of many interest- ing birds." As it is seldom that more than a line or two is devoted to a species, this phase of the subject is perhaps not entered into as exhaustively as ufight be expected from the in- troductory remark. Two species are here re- corded from Arizona for the first time, the White-headed Woodpecker and the Golden Plover, neither froIn specimens actually se- cured. The list is all through compared with that of Scott's anti it is put forward largely as a compilation of the additional ornithological notes and information accumulated since the publication of the latter. Yet we find numer- ous species recorded precisely as Scott treated them, but placed in the category of those found nnder different conditions. The Green-tailed Towbee, Lutescent Warbler, and Yellow-headed Blackbird are casually iuen- tioned as breeding in the' vicinity of Tucson, records of sufficient importance to merit more tietailed accounts--to say the least. So also with Mr. Visher's working out of the cistribn- tion of various closely related sub-species. To say that Dendroica auduboni nigrifrons is"res- ident"on the mountain tops, while I). audubom auduboni nests in the valleys, that Phalaenop- lilus nuttalli nitidus breeds in the mountains and P. nuttalli nullalii in the valleys, and that ialia me.vicana occidenlalis breeds in the spnlces and . m. bairdi in the pines, is, per- haps, definite enough; but these are positive statements that require much field work anti the collecting of many specimens to back them up before they can be expected to be generally accepted. On the whole, the important records are not put forward in such a way as to invite confi- dence in them, the statentents regarding cer- tain of the species are exactly such as have already been published about the same birds in the same general region, and the comnients upon others are of absolute unimportance. This list does not seem to have been carefully considered, anti might well have been left unpnb- lisbed.--H. S.S. WATER BIRDS OF THE VICINITY OF POINT PINGS, CALIFORNIA, by RoLLO t{OWARD BECK. (Proceedings Calif. Acad. Sciences, 4th ser., vol. iii, pp. 57-2; issued Sep. 17, 1911}). In this papewe are provided with the most important contribution to a knowledge of the oeeatiic bird-life of California since the appear- ance of the last one of Loomis's series of papers, in December, 1900. During the past seven years Beck, in his work for the California Academy of Sciences, has spent all put together 26 months in collecting water birds of Monte- rey Bay, with Pacific Grove as a basis. The restilts of his work in specimens, up to the San