334 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I50 



The guinea, or guinea-hen, common now in poultry yards, was 

 known in the period of the Roman Empire, though the present-day 

 domestic stock stems from birds brought to Europe from Africa by 

 Portuguese traders during the fifteenth century. In the beginning the 

 guinea-hen was known as the bird of Turkey, that geographic name 

 being appHed widely to Moslem countries from Africa eastward. In 

 the writings of early naturalists it became confused with the larger 

 turkey introduced from America a little later, which finally inherited 

 the original name, and the bird from Africa became the guinea. 



NUMIDA MELEAGRIS GALE ATA Pallas: Guinea-hen, Gallina de Guinea 



Ntmtida galeata Pallas, Spic. Zoo!., vol. 1, fasc. 4, 1767, p. 13. (Based on the 

 domesticated fowl: Murphy, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 1924, pp. 264-265, 

 suggested Bathurst, at the mouth of the Gambia River, as type locality.) 



According to the records of La Jagua Hunting Club, 27 guinea- 

 fowl were released at the clubhouse at 4:30 a.m. on June 11, 1933. 

 The birds, obtained through Mr. Van Reed of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 

 from wild stock naturalized in that island, came in three lots on May 

 14, 25, and 31 of the year in question to Capt. William Ancrum at 

 Balboa Heights. Karl Curtis informs me that some were seen from 

 time to time through the following year, but that eventually all 

 disappeared. There is no record of their nesting. 



The species has been known as a game bird in the wild in 

 Hispaniola for more than 200 years, and it was hoped that it might 

 have become established in the woodlands that border the Rio 

 La Jagua marshes.] 



Order GRUIFORMES 



Family ARAMIDAE : Limpkin ; Carrao 



The single living species of this family ranges in the New World 

 from the Okefinoke Swamp in southeastern Georgia through Florida 

 and the Greater Antilles, and from south central Mexico through 

 Central America and South America to northern Argentina and south- 

 ern Brazil. The relationships of the family are with the cranes and 

 the trumpeters. Bones of two fossil species described from Oligocene 

 deposits in South Dakota, and of a third from Middle Miocene beds 

 in Nebraska, are indication of former diversity in the group and of 

 its long history in the Americas. Bones of the living species have 

 been found in Pleistocene deposits in several localities in Florida. 



