Neli on Names of Certain North American Birds. 123 



character, the white bill, that is particularly diagnostic of the 

 bird to which the name is commonly applied. In the 12th 

 edition of the Systema however, the feet are said to be flesh 

 colored and the head red. These additions definitely fix the 

 name. This becomes of importance, since two distinct birds are 

 included in the references cited by Linnaeus. Of these Urubu 

 brasUieimb'US Marcgrave appears to be the small yellowheaded 

 buzzard since named (Enops pemigra by Sharpe (Cat. Birds Brit. 

 Mus. I, p. 26, 1874). 



The remaining principal references are four, two of which are 

 from the West Indies, one from Mexico, and the other from the 

 southeastern United States. In the Mexican reference the 

 common name aunt is quoted from Hernandez this evidently 

 is the source of the name -used by Linnaeus, and it is of interest 

 to find that aura is still the common name of this vulture 

 throughout Mexico. In 1839 Wied in the account of his trip 

 from Rockport, Indiana, to Owensboro, Kentucky, calls attention 

 to the differences between the vultures of this group in Brazil and 

 those of North America (Reise in das Innere Nord-America I. 

 p. 162, footnote, 1839). He considers that the Brazilian bird 

 is the true Cathurtcy aura, and gives to the birds of North Amer 

 ica the provisional name of Cathartes septentrionalis. In these 

 notes Wied describes a pair of North American birds in consid 

 erable detail, but does not specify any definite locality for them. 

 Fortunately he published a later and more elaborate paper upon 

 the same subject (Journal ftir Ornithologie 1856, p. 119), 

 and again describes a pair of North American birds which were 

 taken on the Wabash River near New Harmony, Indiana, where 

 he stayed for some time while visiting Thomas Say. As the 

 measurements are identical in both of these descriptions it be 

 comes evident that these birds were the types of Cathartes sep 

 tentrionalis, and enables us to fix the type locality. The name 

 Vvltur aura of Linmeus as originally used applied to all the red 

 headed vultures of the United States, Mexico, and the West 

 Indies. Recent collections from Mexico and the West Indies 

 show that the birds of these regions are very much smaller than 

 those of the northern United States. The series available for 

 comparison shows that the extremes of the two forms are con 

 nected by regular gradation through the intervening territory. 

 These differences between the birds of the two regions appear to 



