1917-] Recently jmblished Ornithological Worka. 631 



down the Brazilian coasts to their winter home. It is only 

 occasionally after a heavy easterly gale that some birds 

 reach the New England coasts, while a few have rarely 

 been driven by westerly gales as far as the coasts of the 

 British Islands. 



Daring the past few years, however, the Eskimo Curlew, 

 formerly arriving in immense flocks in the middle prairie 

 States in the spring, has become rarer and rarer. The last 

 record for Kansas is 1902 and for Wisconsin 1899, while in 

 Nebraska, of which Mr. Swenk writes at greater length, 

 a flock of six or seven were seen in 1913 and a single bird 

 was killed on 17 April, 1915. The bird is probably not yet 

 extinct, but is on the high road to extinction, and will 

 doubtless become so in a few years' time. 



Wetmore on a sexttal character of the Ruddy Duck. 



[On certain secondary sexual characters in the male Ruddy Duck, 

 Erismatura jamaicensis (Gmelin). By Alexander Wetmore. Proc. 

 U. S. Nat. Mus. Washington, vol. 52, 1917, pp. 479-482.] 



The Ruddy Duck is peculiar, as Avas first shown by 

 MacGillivray, in the absence of the bulla ossea or bony 

 box generally found at the junction of the two bronchi. 

 Mr. Wetmore has now discovered an additional peculiarity, 

 confined, however^ in this species to the male sex only. 

 This is the presence of a tracheal air-sac quite unconnected 

 with the regular system of pulmonary air-sacs. The tracheal 

 sac opens into the trachea on the dorsal side immediately 

 behind the larynx. The modifications of the larynx and of 

 the neck muscles which control the inflation of the air-sac 

 are described by Mr. Wetmore, though we think his remarks 

 would have been more easily followed if they had been 

 illustrated by additional and clearer figures. 



The air-sac is inflated by the male during courtship- 

 display, and has only been proved to exist in Erismatura 

 jamaicensis, but from the description given by other authors 

 of the display of other species of the genus, it is probably 

 present in these as well as in the species of the allied genera 

 Thalassornis and Nomonyw. 



