Recently published Ornithological Works. 457 



W. Lloyd commences a series of notes on about 240 species 

 observed in Western Texas. Mr. Cox's account of the 

 capture in North-eastern New Brunswick of a supposed 

 Turkey^ but which proved to be what the Jamaica negro 

 called ''Turkey with a surname'^ (i.e. Cathartes aura) , is 

 amusing, and appears to be the furthest north on record for 

 this Vulture by some 200 miles. A new subspecies of the 

 Sharp-tailed Sparrow, Ammodramus caudacutus subvirgatus, 

 from the head of the Bay of Fundy, is described by Mr. J. 

 Dwiglit, jun. 



Mr. W. E. D. Scott's continuation of his remarks on the 

 avifauna of portions of Arizona calls for no special remark 

 from us. Far otherwise is it with his two harrowing papers 

 upon " The present condition of some of the Bird-rookeries 

 on the Gulf coast of Florida ; " and the end of his sad story 

 of slaughter has not yet been told. Wooded islands, where 

 only a very few years ago the Roseate Spoonbill, the Reddish 

 Egret, all the common species of Herons, and the White 

 Ibis, nested in myriads never to be forgotten by those who 

 had visited the favoured spots, were noAV almost entirely 

 deserted, their former occupants having been exterminated 

 by the " plume-hunters " for the northern market. One 

 dealer alone, at Fort Myers, on the Caloosahatchie, regularly 

 employed from forty to sixty gunners at an average price of 

 40 cents per plume or flat skin. At a breeding-place of 

 the Reddish Egrets, Mr. Scott found a huge pile of dead, 

 half -decayed birds which had recently been shot from their 

 nests in the trees above, and he counted over 200 from which 

 the back-plumes had been torn away. A small island con- 

 taining a Brown Pelican's " rookery " was protected by the 

 owner, who proposed to let the unhappy birds rear their 

 young; but one day, during his absence from home, an old 

 French dealer came with a boat and deliberately killed off 

 about 180 old birds as they were feeding their young, which 

 of course died of starvation. Such are merely a few instances 

 of the extermination that is being conducted on a truly 

 American scale (as regards its thoroughness) for the supply 

 of articles required by the exigencies of the female fashion 



