Abstract
THE publications issued by the American Government under the above title are so appreciated in this country that it seems unnecessary to compliment Dr. Hayden and his coadjutors on the appearance of another of their useful volumes. During the last few years, however, there have been brought out by the U.S. Department of the Interior some works by Dr. Elliot Coues, which for patient industry must compare with any that have ever been compiled in scientific literature. The title of the volume now before us reads as follows:—Art. 26. Third Instalment of American Ornithological Bibliography, by Dr. Elliot Coues, U.S.A., and consists of 545 octavo pages of small print. How many titles of papers and books are quoted in this laborious treatise we should be sorry to have to count. The labour must have been enormous, and it is only those who have to follow the intricate windings of synonymic literature who can appre ciate the work here performed by Dr. Coues. We learn that we may expect at some future time a similar con spectus of titles relating to the ornithology of the Old World, but although the present volume professedly deals with American Birds only, many standard works of general interest are passed in review by the author, who exhibits great judgment as acritic. Taking Gray's “Hand-List of Birds” as a basis of classification to follow, Dr. Coues treats of each family separately, and then in chronological order he records every work, every paper, and every note which directly or indirectly affects the American species, and as regards each year the publi cations are separately entered under the authors' names in alphabetical order. We must however again warn orni thologists that so many collateral references are given to Old World papers where the families are at all cosmo politan, that therefore no one writing on any group of birds can afford to neglect this book. As for Dr. Coues himself, we can only imagine the sigh of relief with which he must have corrected the last proof of such a toilsome undertaking, although he must have been assured before hand of the heartfelt gratitude of every ornithological confrere throughout the globe.
Bulletin of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 1879-–80.
Vol. v. (Washington, 1880.)
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S., R. Bulletin of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 1879–80. Nature 23, 481 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023481a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023481a0
