on the Birds of Si. Croix. 373 



my passage from St. Thomas to Halifax, Nova Scotia, towards 

 the end of A.ugust 1857, a day or two before arriving at the 

 Bermudas, two or three came round the steamer, and these 

 seemed to me to be Th. wilsoni. North of Bermuda we had a 

 larger escort, amounting perhaps to forty or fifty at once, and 

 there were clearly two species among them, but which they 

 might have been I do not pretend to say. We were going at a 

 good speed ; and I fished for them to no purpose/^ — A. N. 



We have now enumerated all the species of birds which we 

 have satisfactory reasons for believing to be found in St. Croix ; 

 but we must beg leave to subjoin a few remarks on some which 

 have been said by former observers to occur in the neighbouring 

 islands, and which further investigation may discover in the 

 locality of which we have been treating. 



The earliest work noticing the Natural History of the Danish 

 West Indian Colonies, with which we are acquainted, is that of 

 Dr. West, published, it would seem, at Copenhagen in 1793. 

 The original edition we have not ourselves examined ; but we 

 have seen a translation of it into German*, which was made the 

 following year, from which it appears that, though the Flora 

 and some portions of the Fauna are more or less fully treated of, 

 only two birds are mentioned (p. 24^3), namely — 



"Ardea ccerulea, \\ulg^'\. Gaulding, Crab-eater.*' 



and "Fulica chloropus. v. Coob [sic], TVasserhuhn." 

 The former of these is, we imagine, not the Linnean species of 

 that name, but Butorides virescens (No. 46) of this paper, while 

 the latter is, of course, Gallinula galeata (No. 43). 



The next author who treats of the Zoology of the Virgin 

 Islands, to which group St. Croix and St. Thomas belong, is 

 M. Ledru, one of the naturalists accompanying the expedition 

 (whereof the celebrated Mauge was also a member) commanded 



Mr. G. R. Gray's carefully drawn-up list of the synonyms of this and 

 three other very distinct species which have been confounded with it, will 

 be found in the ' Zoologist ' for 1852 (x. p. 3696). The short list given 

 by the late Mr. Yarrell (B. B. Suppl. 2, p. 63, and 3rd Edit. iii. p. 643), 

 as well as his statement that a figure of this species is given by Forster in 

 his unpublished drawings, is, I regret to say, incorrect." — A. N. 



* " Beytrage zur Beschreibung von St. Croix, &c. : von Hans West, 

 Rector am Westindischen Schuhnstitut, &c. Kopenhagen, 1794." 8vo. 



