66 BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPAKATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



What the summer dress is like I am not prepared to state, but I have reasons 

 for suspecting that breeding examples of the eastern and western (or interior) 

 forms are not easily distinguishable from one another. I was at first inclined 

 to think that the bird which I have named frazari was merely the adult of 

 melanoleucus in winter plumage, but a careful examination of Mr. Frazar's 

 specimens has satisfied me that several of them are young, and on comparing 

 them with a good series of both adults and young of melanoleucus, shot at corre- 

 sponding dates in New England, I have become convinced that the differences 

 to which 1 have just called attention cannot be satisfactorily explained other 

 than b)"^ the assumption that they characterize two distinct geographical races. 

 A rather puzzling feature of the case is that I have several specimens perfectly 

 typical of melanoleucus from British Columbia, and a dozen or more equally 

 characteristic oi frazari from Georgia and Florida, but birds of such free powers 

 of flight as Yellow-legs are notorious wanderers, and it may be that frazari 

 breeds only in the interior of British America and that it does not visit either 

 the Atlantic or Pacific coast until it has passed well to the southward of the 

 northern boundary of the United States. 



This hitherto unrecognized form of the Greater Yellow-legs is, no doubt, the 

 bird which Mr. Xantus found at San Jose del Cabo (December) and Cape St. 

 Lucas (date not recorded), which Mr. Belding gives as " very common in 

 winter " south of latitude 24^ 30', and which Mr. Bryant reports as " tolerably 

 common along the estero " north of Magdalena Bay and also " seen about fresh 

 water at Comondu and San Pedro." Mr. Frazar noted a single bird at La Paz 

 on March 21, and between September 19 and October 20 collected fourteen 

 specimens at San Jose del Cabo, where, however, he did not meet with them 

 in any great numbers. His latest record at this place is November 9, when 

 two birds were observed. 



Totanus flavipes (Gmel.). 

 Yellow-legs. 



Although the Yellow-legs has not been previously recorded from any part 

 of Lower California Mr. Frazar found it much more numerous than T. melano- 

 leucus frazari. It was, however, observed only at San Jose del Cabo where it 

 became common as early as August 28, but did not reach its maximum abun- 

 dance until the middle of September, when upwards of two hundred were 

 sometimes seen in the coi;rse of a single day. After September 20, its num- 

 bers rapidly diminished and the last bird was taken on October 7. 



This Yellow-legs winters as far south as Patagonia and breeds in the Arctic 

 and Subarctic portions of North America. 



