APPENDIX. 



The following species and sub-species of birds have been omitted from the body of the 

 work for one reason or another. Herein will also be found some notes and corrections and 

 a descriptive list of hypothetical and extinct species. 



Graculus floridanus 



Florida Cormorant. 



DESCRIPTION. 

 Sp. Ch. 8ize, rather small. Like the Double-crested Cormorant of which a general description is 

 given on page 56, but smaller. The smallest dimensions there will apply to this species. 



OBSERVATIONS. 



In stating that I considered the Florida Cormorant and the Double-crested were one and the same 

 species I consider now that I was mistaken. I also think authors, who consider that one is a sub species of 

 the other, are also mistaken. We cannot for a moment doubt that with the retreating ice sheet which cov- 

 ered the country during the glacial period that form, which is now the Double-crested Cormorant, spread 

 northward and became gradually modified by the changed environments into a stronger, larger species, which 

 acquired the migratory instinct; it is also equally true that, while at one time there may have been a con- 

 nected chain of breeding places, extending from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Florida, and consequently con- 

 necting intergrades between the northern and southern forms of cormorants, this condition of affairs no 

 longer exists. Therefore, as more than a thousand miles intervene between the breeding grounds of one and 

 the other, there can be no intermingling of one species with the other, for if they come together at all they 

 meet in the winter, and no one can believe that migrant birds wliich breed at a different season, will mate 

 with a resident species which breed at another. Hence it is that if we separate the birds at all we must 

 separate them as species not as sub-species. I may be thought inconsistent in considering these two forms 

 of cormorants specific and yet give the American Herring Gull as a sub-species only, but I think it highly 

 probable that the European Herring Gull is a straggler to this coast, and that it may interbreed with our 

 form. 



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