2 NORTH AMERICAN OOLOGY. PART I. 



ments have been made by writers of its having been met with even in Nova Scotia. 

 West of the AUeghanies it has a much less restricted distribution, from Central 

 America almost to the Arctic regions. It is found more or less frequently in all 

 the Middle, the Southern, Western, and Northwestern States, without probably an 

 exception. It is met with in large numbers throughout the entire Pacific coast of 

 North America, from Lower California to Washington Territory. And until the 

 discovery that the species in South America, Avhich has been regarded as identical 

 with it, is really distinct ( Cathartes jota of Molina), it was supposed to have an 

 extended South American range. It is not known with certainty whether the C. 

 aura is found in South America at all, or whether the species with which it has 

 hitherto been confounded has exclusive possession of that field. Since attention 

 has been drawn to the point, every specimen from that quarter which has been ex- 

 amined proves to be, not the northern, but a distinct and smaller species, of a 

 more uniformly black color.^ The doubt naturally arises whether the C. aura is 

 at all South American, and, until it can be shown positively to be so, it should 

 be excluded from the lists of that region.^ 



The Turkey Buzzard breeds along the entire Atlantic coast, from New Jersey 

 to the Gulf of Mexico, and throughout North America, south of a line ex- 

 tending from the former State to the Pacific, this line reaching farther north as we 

 proceed west. It nests in Cook County, Illinois, (latitude 42° north,) as I learn 

 from the observations of my friend, Robert Kennicott, Esq.^ David Douglas, possi- 

 bly not the most undoubted authority, in a letter to Mr. Swainson,^ mentions 

 seeing " vast numbers of this species in Upper Canada, near Sandwich and Lake 

 St. Clair, in 1823," and implies that they were breeding there at that time. 

 According, also, to Dr. Richardson, its summer migrations are higher in the inte- 

 rior of the continent than on the Pacific coast. He speaks of finding it along 

 the banks of the Saskatchewan, in latitude 55°, late in the month of June. This, 

 however, is stated, not from his own personal observations, but on the strength 

 of a specimen in the Museum of the Hudson's Bay Company, obtained in that neigh- 

 borhood.^ Mr. Say observed this species as far to the north as latitude 49°, and 



^ Cassin's Illustrations of the Birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America, pp. 

 57, 58. 



^ Since the above was in type, a few facts have been brought to my knowledge which to some extent 

 seem to favor the impression that the C. aura is not a South American bird, or if so, only in occasional 

 instances. It is not found in all the West India Islands. It exists in Cuba, Trinidad, and Jamaica, but is 

 nowhere common, and is unknown in Hayti, as well as in all the intermediate islands of the Caribbean 

 chain. Mr. Richard Hill, an observant naturalist of Spanish-town, Jamaica, in speaking of these facts, 

 writes : " We are no doubt indebted for it to an accidental colony blown over to us from Cuba, and 

 Cuba herself owes it to some stray visitants from the neighboring continent of Florida." Darwin, in the 

 Zoology of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (Part III, p. 8), while supposing the C. aura and the jota 

 of Molina to be identical, notices certain peculiarities in the habits and markings of the South Amer- 

 ican birds differing from those of the northern species. 



^ Transactions of the Illinois State Agricultural Society, I, 580. 



^ Fauna Boreali-Americana, II, 4. 



^ This is doubted by Mr. Douglas, who suggests that they confounded this species with C. atratus. 

 Its correctness is, however, indirectly confirmed by Dr. Gambol, who, in his paper on the Birds of 



