188 THE CONDOR Vol. XVI It is l'ikely I'll have to go a hundred miles farther south to make the closer acquaint- ance of a series. The one species of goose I've taken here is much' different from any of our Califor- nia visitors. They stand about on surf- beaten rocky points like the gulls, the male pure white and the female dark. But the Cinnamon Teal swing over bunches of tules as do the flocks in fall at Los BartoN, before they leave for the south and the shooting season begins. The call of the curlew, and the sweep of the sanderling fl'ocks, carries one back to the Alameda marshes; but the hoarse penguin call, and circling albatross in view from my window, bring me back again with suddenness to the Southern Hemisphere. Sincerely, R. H. BECl?. Ancud, Chiloe Island, Chile, April 26, 1914. PUBLICATIONS REVIEWED THE BIRI?S OF NORTH AND MIDDLE AMERICA: ] [etc., 8 lines] IBYl RORERT RIOOWAY, I Curator, Division of Birds. [ ] Part w. I Family Picidae---The Woodpeckers. ] Fami- ly Capitonidae--The Barbers. I Family Ramphastidae---The Toucans. ] Family Buc- conidae--The Puff Birds. ] Family Galbuli- dae--The Jacamars. I Family Alcedinidae-- The Kingfishers. I Family Todidae---The Todies. f Family Momotidae---The Motmots. I Family Caprimulgidae--The Goatsuckers. I Family Nyctibiidae--The Potoos. I Family Tytonidae--The Barn Owls. ] Family Bu- bonidae---The Eared Owls. [ I Washing- ton: ] Government Printing Office. I 1914. I ?U. S. Nation. Mus., Bull. No. 50, Part w, pp. xxq-882, 36 plates; "issued April 8, 1914." It is certainly gratifying to the many ad- mirers of Mr. Ridgway to note the regular appearance of the successive portions of his great work, the first of which was published nearly fourteen years ago. The latest vol- ume, Part v?, of content as indicated in the above transcript from the main title page, shows the same high standard of treatment as in the best of the previous volumes.* In the six volumes which have appeared to date (as stated in the Preface, page vi, of Part vi), "are treated, in detail (that is, with full synonymies and descriptions), be- sides the Families above mentioned and the
- For reviews of previous volumes, see: for Part. I,
CONDOR, IV, 1902, pp. 22-23; for Part II, CONDOR, V, 1903, pp. 22-23; for Part Ill, CONDOR, VII, 1905, p. 147; for Part IV, CONDOR, X, 1908, p. 53; for Part V, CONDOR. XlV, 1912, p. 110. higher groups to which they, respectively, be- long, 520 genera, 2111 species and subspe- cies, besides 155 extralimital genera and 478 extralimital species and subspecies whose diagnostic characters are given in the 'keys', and their principal synonymy (full synonymy in case of the genera) given in footnotes." There are a number of interesting rendi- tions of systematic status among the higher groups,--interpretations which would bear much discussion, mainly, in the mind of the reviewer, corroborative of Mr. Ridgway's views. Our remarks in the present connec- tion are best confined to nomenclatural and systematic points likely to be of most in- terest to students of western ornithology. The yellow-shafted flicker which occurs rarely in California pure-blooded, more often as a strain in so-called "hybrids", is re- ferred to under the name Boreal Flicker ( Co'laptes auratuN borealis Ridgway), the assumption being that our birds are winter visitants from the far north (pages 20-22). Mr. Ridgway believes that "some California specimens are doubtless hybrids of C. aura- tun borealis and C. caler sat,uratior, whose respective ranges adjoin in northern British Columbia and southern Alaska." While the "Hybrid Flicker" has been the subject of several special essays, a new and exhaustive study of the case in the light of modern find- ings-in chemico-physiology would, in the mind of the reviever, very probably result in a different systematic treatment of western, purely yellow-shafted, examples, as well as of "hybrids". As already announced (Ridgway, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., xx?v, 1911, page 34), a new genus is founded for that section? of the old genus Melanerpes containing the California Woodpecker. The latter becomes Balanos- phyra lormicivora bairdi. This is possibly justified in the effort to secure uniformity in rank among related bird groups. But the continued general tendency towards generic refinement does not seem to the reviewer to be in line with the development of a clear and useful system of classification. Bangs' name, picinus, is adopted for the "Western Pileated Woodpecker". The bird of the Pacific Coast from northern California to Vancouver Island thus becomes Phloeoto- mus pileatus picinus. The southern race of the White-headed Woodpecker, Xenopicus albolarvatus gravi- rostris Grinnell, not admitted to the A. O. U. Check-List, is given full recognition by Ridgway (page 267). The status of the western sapsuckers re-
