Biologia Centrali-Americana Aves

Abstract

CONGRATULATIONS to the surviving author of these volumes must be mingled with deep condolence that his long-tried coadjutor and comrade should not have been spared to complete this portion of the great work in which they were jointly engaged, and to supply that summary of its contents which he, perhaps, alone could have written. But acutely as the loss of Mr. Salvin is to be lamented, if on no other account than this, no less real is the gratification with which the bringing to an end of a task that has lasted for a quarter of century is to be regarded, and the relief to Mr. Godman's mind at the accomplishment of another portion of his gigantic design must be enormous. It is getting on for twenty years since the volume treating of the mammals of Central America was reviewed in these pages by the late Sir William Flower (NATURE, xxxiv., p. 615, October 28, 1886), and that portion also suffered by the untimely death of its author, Mr. Edward R. Alston, so that instead of the. comprehensive view of the mammalian fauna of the country which he had intended to appear in the introduction to the volume, we had merely a series of tables of distribution which he had prepared to found that view upon, and these tables Mr. Sclater, who prefixed a few prefatory sentences, left to speak for themselves. Speak for themselves they did, but they needed an interpreter, since they were drawn up for the most part on geographical lines—or, to be more accurate, from a politico-geographical base, the geographical element preponderating.

Biologia Centrali-Americana. Aves.

By Osbert Salvin Frederick Ducane Godman 4 vols. (London: 1879–1904.)