ual has two main
objects, to furnish to young students the means of identifying species,
and to give remote students the means of comparing species. For both
purposes the commonest birds are most important, since everybody begins
with these. A boy wishes, for instance, to identify the wood-thrush; or
a Southern naturalist wishes to compare its traits with those of the
mocking-bird. He finds that in this book the wood-thrush is dismissed
with two pages, while there is a quotation from Wilson seven pages long
upon the habits of the mocking-bird. When will naturalists learn that
the first duty of each observer is to make a thorough study of his own
locality, and meanwhile to let the rest of the world alone?

One looks in vain in these pages for any good description of the
song-sparrow, the blue-bird, the blue-jay, the kingfisher, or the
oriole. These birds are allowed but a page or two each, although, for
some reason, more liberal space is given to the robin and the crow. But
there is no bird so familiar that it does not offer subjects for
interesting speculation and study. The pretty nocturnal trill of the
hairbird; the remarkable change which civilization has wrought in the
habits of the cliff-swallow; the disputed question whether the cat-bird
is or is not a mocker;--these and a hundred similar points relate to
very common birds, and are accordingly unnoticed by Mr. Samuels. Eggs
really interest him, and his descriptions and measurements of these
constitute the most original part of the book, and are highly valuable.
On the other hand, the notes of birds are very inadequately described,
and sometimes not at all; he does not mention that the loon has a voice.

Again, he does full justice to the chronology of bird biography, and
gives ample dates as to their coming and going, nesting and hatching.
But as to their geographical distribution the information is scanty, and
not always quite reliable. Thus the snowy-owl is described (p. 78) as
occurring "principally on the sea-coast," whereas it is tolerably
abundant in the very heart of Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
etc.; the snow-bird is described as nesting in the White Mountains (p.
314), while the more remarkable fact that it nests on Monadnock is
omitted; the meadow-lark is described as only remaining in New England
through "mild winters" (p. 344), whereas near Newport it remains during
the coldest seasons, more abundantly than any other conspicuous bird.
These