Brooks' and Swarth's 'distributional List of the Birds of British Columbia'

thither.The experiences of egg collectors seem to be the same the world over, as we read of the authors' search for nests of the Black Vulture and their discovery, after successfully reaching one, that it had been plundered by some Polish oSlogists a few days before.--W.S. Brooks' and Swarth's 'Distributional List of the Birds of British Columbia.'--Thisexcellent publication, • No. 17 of the Cooper Club's 'Pacific Coast Avifauna' series, follows the plan of the previously issued "Distributional Lists" of the birds of California and Arizona and gives us for the first time a carefully compiled and exact statement of the distribution of the birds of British Columbia.The extent of this western Canadian province is much greater than is generally recognized, being twice that of California, and equal to the combined area of the sixteen eastern states from Maine to North Carolina and west to Ohio, while its extreme diversity of topography greatly complicates the task of working out the ranges of its birds or mammals.With these facts clearly in mind, we are able to appreciate the enormous task that the authors have faced, and the admirable way in which they have handled it.They wonder why no realization of the complicated nature of the distribution of British Columbian birds seems to have entered the heads of the compilers of the A. O. U. 'Check List' and criticise rather severely the handling of British Columbia in that work.While making no apology for the shortcomings of the 'Check List,' a word or two of unwritten history may not be out of place in this connection.As the time approached for putting the last edition through the press, it was at first decided to reprint the distributions as they were in the second edition but as these were so obviously out of date the writer of the present review offered to compile new distributions from Ridgway's 'Birds of North and Middle America,' so far as then published, and the latest state lists, including several manuscript lists for some of the southern states.Lack of time at his disposal forbade going any farther, but his work was revised by Prof. W. W. Cooke of the Biological Survey and some records in his possession added and some statements altered.The two errors cited by Messrs. Brooks and Swarth, as examples of the shortcomings of the 'Check-List,' did not, as a matter of fact, originate there, but will be found in Ridgway's work above cited, so that the compiler can at least be credited with accurate compilation even though he lacked knowledge of the zoogeography of British Cohimbial An interesting feature of the list before tts is the frequent interpolation of maps showing graphically the distribution of the various races of the more plastic species which it is often very difficult to define in words.• A Distributional List of the Birds of British Columbia.

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