Page:Condor21(1).djvu/45

 44 THE CONDOR Vol. XXI the address of some member upon whom I might call. Some of the most delightful and lasting friendships have had their begin- nings when, wholly unannounced, some Cooper Club member has dropped in at my house wlth the 'apology' that he was passing through town and had seen my name in the Club roster and thought he would look me up. The value of this list is perhaps greatest to those of us who reside at some distance from the Club centers and are thereby deprived from attending meetings; for through it we can get in touch with other. sequestered members in 'nearby towns. May the annual roster continue to grow until it appropriates not only ten but twenty pages of our magazine!" A wonderfully interesting sketch of the history and accomplishments of the Amer- ican Ornithologisists' Union appears in a late issue of The American Museum Journal (vol. xwL 1918, pp. 473-483). This is from the pen of Dr. T. S. Palmer, the new secre- tary of the Union, and includes among other notable features an assembled photograph of the founders and officers of the Union as they appeared thirty-five years ago. In this connection it is a pleasure to be able to present herewith a group of certain prom- inent A. O. U. members, as photographed by Waiter K. Fisher at the 1917 A. O. U. meet- ing. Three of these, Dr. A. K, Fisher, Mr. William Brewster and Mr. Charles F. Batch- elder, appeared in the group of 1883. Cooper Club members and other ornithol- ogists will be interested to learn that a movement has been started to establish an American Society of Mammalogists. The committee on organization consists of Dr. Hartley H. T. Jackson, Chairman; Dr. Glo- ver M. Allen, Dr. J. A. Allen, Dr. Joseph Grinnell, Mr. Ned Hollister, Mr. Arthur H. Howell, Mr. Wilfred H. Osgood, Mr. E. A. Preble, and Dr. Walter P. Taylor. Incom- pleted plans call for an annual meeting, sec- tional meetings, and the publication of a magazine o'f both a popular and technical nature. Life histories, ecology, evolution, and other phases of mammalogy will receive attention as well as taxonomy. It is hoped that an organization meeting can be held this spring (1919). Anyone who desires to join or is interested in the organization may address the chairman of the committee, U. S. Biological Survey, Washington, D.C. We are greatly pleased to be able to an- nounce that favoring circumstances have permitted Mr. W. L. Dawson to again take up work on his Birds of California. The preparation of the text is now well under way, the gathering of the material for illus- tration having already been practically com- pleted. Avifauna no. 13 has gone to press--a pretty convincing piece of evidence that good times are indeed returning. This num- ber is J. R. Pemberton's Second Ten Year Index to The Condor. The question has been raised as to the propriety of publish- ing such an index as. one of the Avifauna series, instead of separately. Without go- ing into the reasons here, it has seemed on the whole best to follow the preceflent set when the first ten year index was issued, namely to give it & number in the Avifauna series. PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED A Rzwzw OF THZ ALATOSSZS, PZTRzLS, AD Dw PzTRz.S [being contribution number 12 based upon the expedition of the California Academy of Sciences to the Gala- pages Islands, 1905-1906], by LEVERZT"r Mmr.s Looters. Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., 4th set., vol 2, pp. 1-187, pls. 1-17; issued April 22, 1918. We learn from the "historic sketch", which comprises chapter one of the paper under review, that Elliott Coues, of all pre- vious authors, has contributed most import- antly to our systematic knowledge of the Tubinares. His work, in the light of later developments; has proven most scholarly; yet the chief of his contributions was pub- lished in 1864 and 1866, when he had not yet attained his twenty-fourth year. Loomis thus at the outset pays appreciative tribute to the chief of his predecessors in the field he has chosen for his own special study. Under the heading "geographic distribu- tion", among the more striking generaliza- tions is that barriers to pelagic species of birds are to be found in the limits of food- producing areas. While there is good rea- son for recognizing control by temperature also, a third factor of importance concerns historical circumstances. Loomis divides the oceanic portion of the earth's surface into "distribution' areas", classified into three different grades, namely, superarea, area, and subarea, based on the occurrence of spe- cies at their breeding stations. These areas are demonstrated on the basis of the Tubin- ares of the world. Of the subareas there are twenty-five all told, and one of these is the "Californian Subarea", with six diagnostic species. The subject of migration is gone into at some length. Interesting cases are de- scribed, of the long "transequatorial" emi- grations of several of the shearwaters from the South Pacific to the North Pacific. There are also regular emigrations, though less ex- tended as a rule, of species from the north-