A^elson — Karnes of Certain North American Birds. 123 



charaetoi-, tlic wliitc 1)111, that is particularly diagnostic of the 

 Mrd to which the nauu' is coinnionly api)li('(l. Tn the 12th 

 edition (if thr Systcnia h(>\v('v<'r, the feet are said to be flesh 

 c'olorccl and the head red. These additions definitely fix the 

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

 inchided in the references cited by Linnteus. Of these Uruhu 

 hr(islli( iisiliiis Maregrave appears to l)e the small yellowheaded 

 buzzard since named (Eiiops jxruij/rK by Sharpe (Cat. Birds Brit. 

 Mus. 1. 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 

 soutlu'astern United States. In the Mexican reference the 

 common name ((i(r<( is quoted from Hernandez — this evidently 

 is the source of the name used by Linnteus, and it is of interest 

 to find that a urn is still the common name of this vulture 

 throughout Mexico. In 1S89 Wied in the account of his trip 

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

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

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

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

 is the true Cathmies nuni, and gives to the birds of North Amer- 

 ica the provisional name of Cathartes septcntrionalls. 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 elalwrate paper upon 

 the same subject (Journal fiir Ornithologie 185(), 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- 

 tciitridiKiiis^ and enables us to fix the type locality. The name 

 Viiitiir (iiirn of Linmeus as (n-iginally used applied to all the red- 

 headed vultures of the Unite<l 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 

 compai-ison shows that the extremes of the two forms are con- 

 nected by regular gradation through the intervening territory. 

 These dift'erences between the Inrds of the two regions appear to 



