Todd: The Birds of the Isle of Pines. 155 



are leading many an unwary bona fide settler into an unprofitable 

 venture, the potential capacity of the soil being by no means the only 

 factor entering into the case. 



Previous Work. 



The well-known Cuban naturalist, the late Dr. John Gundlach, was 

 in January, 1854, apparently the first ornithologist to visit the Isle of 

 Pines. For a period of forty years thereafter his notes, published in 

 various periodicals and sometimes at second-hand, remained our only 

 source of information concerning its avifauna. According to Mr. Cory, 

 to whom he furnished a manuscript list of the birds observed, Gundlach 

 again visited the island in April, 1892, but whether in the inter- 

 mediate period does not appear. Gundlach, however, failed to recog- 

 nize the importance of a comparative study of the bird-life of 

 the island, which he evidently regarded as not essentially different 

 from that of Cuba, and while his latest work abounds in references to 

 the Isle of Pines, in almost ever}^ case it is merely to mention incident- 

 ally the occurrence there of certain Cuban species. 



In 1900 Messrs. William Palmer and Joseph H. Riley of the U. S. 

 National Museum, made a brief collecting trip to the island, from June 

 27 to July 13 inclusive. Practically all of their work was done in the 

 vicinity of Nueva Gerona, except for part of two days which Mr- 

 Palmer spent at Manigua, a plantation about ten miles west of that 

 town, in the pines. A list of fifty-one species was made on this trip;; 

 all well-known forms. 



In March, 1902, the late Mr. Walter R. Zappey visited the island 

 and made a small collection of birds, which went to the Rothschild! 

 Museum at Tring, England, where up to date they have not been 

 reported upon. In 1904, however, the same collector visited the 

 island again, remaining from April 18 to June 4 inclusive. His route 

 appears to have been from Nueva Gerona, Bibijagua, etc., to Santa 

 Fe, El Hospital, and Pasadita to the south coast at Playa Larga, and 

 he seems to have been the first naturalist to visit the Cienaga. Hia 

 material, amounting to two hundred and sixty-seven specimens, went 

 into the collection of Messrs. E. A. and O. Bangs (now in the Museun> 

 of Comparative Zoology), and together with his field-notes was the 

 basis of the first systematic account of the birds of the island. In 

 this paper, published in 1905, Messrs. Bangs and Zappey pointed out 

 for the first time the distinctness of several of the birds from the Isle 



