General Notes. 89 



781, written with lead pencil. A search was at once made among sev- 

 eral old catalogues of the Society's collections, with the result that in 

 "A new Catalogue of Jhe Specimens in the Department of Comparative 

 Anatomy belonging to the Boston Society of Natural History," 1859- 

 1875, there was found the entry of this sfjecimen, as "Phyllostoma, " 

 one example, from Surinam, received in 1832 from Dr. Cragin". From 

 this it would appear that the type locality of Ametrida minor is Suri- 

 nam, or Dutch Guiana, South America. The date of acquisition, as 

 above given, is probably erroneous. This catalogue, it appears, was 

 copied from an earlier manuscript catalogue and the date 1832 may have 

 been substituted through mistake, for 1839, when Dr. Francis W. Crag- 

 in, in ilarch of that year, presented to the Society "a large and valua- 

 ble collection of Mammalia, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, Insects and Shells 

 from Surinam". The previously recorded donations of Dr. Cragin, as 

 entered in an early catalogvie of the '30's, did not include any mammals. 

 The exact locality in Surinam whence the bat came, cannot now be de- 

 termined; but, as I am informed by Dr. Cragin's son. Prof. F. W. 

 Cragin, the donor of the specimen resided for a number of years at Para- 

 maribo, where he was for a time U. S. consul, .so that it is quite proba- 

 ble that it came from that vicinity. The coloration of the type speci- 

 men, as recorded by its describer, is "almost white", which may in part 

 be due to bleaching in alcohol for these sixty odd years, though other- 

 wise it is still in an excellent state of preservation. Trouessart appears 

 to have omitted the species altogether from his recent "Catalogus". — 

 Glove)' M. Allen. 



An early name for the northern form of Sphyrapicus ruber. 



About a year ago Mr. Joseph Grinnell (Condor, III, 12, 1901) de- 

 scribed a new sapsucker from southern California as SpJiyrapicvs variits 

 ditfjyetti, restricting Gmelin's Picus rither to the northwest coast region. 

 Mr. W. H. Osgood has recently (N. A. Fauna, No. 21, 45, September 20, 

 1901) reversed the case by considering the northern form to be the new 

 one, reviving for it PicuR flaviveritris Vieillot (Ois. Amer. Sept., II, 1807, 

 G7), based on Cook's description (Last Voyage, II, 1784, 297). If Mr. 

 Osgood's view of the question should prove to be the correct one, a still 

 earlier term, Picus ruber notkensis Suckow (Anfangsgr. Naturgesch. 

 Thiere, II, I, 1800, 535) will have to be considered. Suckow also based 

 his name on Cook, and gave practically the same description as did 

 Vieillot. He indicated the relationship of Cook's bird by making it a 

 subspecies of Picus ruber, and was one of the first naturalists to con- 

 sistently and intelligently use trinomials as we do at present. The 

 proper name for the northern form would therefore appear to be Sphyra- 

 picus ruber notkensis (Suckow). — Charles W. Richmond. 



