166 



adults ; the bill, however, is much smaller. The tail has the general indis 

 tinctness of marking peculiar to immature examples of Coccyzus ; the wing 

 feathers are narrowly edged and tipped with rusty ; the throat and chest 

 are plain ashy ; the lower sides, flanks and under tail coverts are strongly 

 washed with dull tawny-ochraceous. In one rather interesting point this 

 specimen is peculiar the outer pair of rectrices fall 18 mm. short of the 

 other feathers, giving the tail a more fan-shaped and therefore more normal 

 appearance than in the adult, which has a square tail. 



It would have been, perhaps, hardly worth while to make this correction 

 here had not Sclater, on Barrows' record alone, included Coccyzus pumilus 

 in his Argentine Ornithology (Vol. II, p. 39), remarking that "the species 

 was only previously known to occur in Venezuela and Colombia." In the 

 Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum, Vol. XIX, 1891, p. 313, Shelley 

 includes in his synonymy, under Cocci/zus pumilus, a reference to Barrows' 

 record, but does not allow that record to affect the distribution of the 

 species, the habitat of which is given as "The Island of Trinidad,* Vene 

 zuela and Columbia." Ontrnm Bang*. 



OX A SUPPOSED CONTINENTAL SPECIMEN OF SOLENODON. 



There is in the Museum of Comparative Zoloogy a specimen of ,SVr//o//o/> 

 that was sent in alcohol (entire and apparently fresh when immersed in the 

 spirits) from the Isthmus of Darien, in 1871, by the late Dr. G. A. Maack. 

 Twenty years later, on the strength of this specimen, Prof. Samuel Carman 

 in his review of Flower and Lydekker's " An Introduction to the Study of 

 Mammals Living and Extinct"! said: "NVefind Solenodon restricted to 

 Cuba and Hayti though also found in Central America." This published 

 statement brought forth for a time no end of comment, and Professor 

 Garman defended himself by saying that there was the specimen and that 

 there could be no question of its genuineness. In time the controversy 

 died a natural death, and even Garman's statement that Solenodon occurs 

 in Central A merica is probably now forgotten. Fearing, however, that one 

 day the question was sure to be mooted again, I took the Solenodon out of its 

 jar, skinned it, removed the skull and compared it with all available 

 material. This I did with the utmost care, because if Solenodon does still 

 occur on the continent as does not seem altogether unreasonable in the 

 light of recent disco veriest it surely must be different from either of the 

 island species with which we are familiar. 



The specimen in question proved indistinguishable in any way from 

 Cuban examples, but, wishing another opinion than my own, t sent it to 

 Gerri^S. Miller, Jr., who agreed with me that it unquestionably belonged 



* Neither Leotaud nor Chapman give this bird as found in Trinidad, and I therefore 

 doubt its occurrence there. See Chapman, Bull. Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist., Vol. VI, 1894, 

 pp. 10-11, as to numerous birds wrongly attributed to the island. 



f The Nation, No. 1381, Dec. 17, 1891, p. 477. 



t The discovery of a Capromys-like rodent in the mountains of Venezuela Procap- 

 omysgeaji (Pousargues)-is not less astonishing, and much in the same line, as would 

 be the existence of a Solenodon on the continent. 



