THE BIRDS OF HAITI AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 13 



whose summit it rests. Later in October he made an excursion to 

 " Fort-Royal ' : , followed by a journey to the Riviere Massacre in 

 search of living crocodiles. On February 7, 1821, he left for 

 Gona'ives, arriving on the third day, and continued later to St. Marc, 

 but did not go to Port-au-Prince. His work in natural history was 

 much curtailed by the political conditions at the time. In his ac- 

 count of the fauna he gives observations on habits of a few birds and 

 a list of 78 species, of which he indicates that he secured specimens 

 of 52. 



Paul Wilhelm, Herzog von Wiirttemberg, also visited Hispaniola, 

 since in his Erste Reise nach dem Nordlichen Amerika in den Jahren 

 1822 bis 1824, published in 1835 he speaks (p. 48) of a shell brought 

 to him in Cuba and remarks " desto haufiger f and ich sie spater auf 

 S. Domingo und an den ostlichen abhangen der Cordillern." And 

 later (p. 59) mentions reports of a mapou tree near Miragoane re- 

 vered by natives as a god. In another place (p. 68) he mentions two 

 forms of crow on " St. Domingo " and in a footnote says they are 

 new and gives them scientific names. Wiirttemberg made two jour- 

 neys and must have visited Hispaniola in the second since his detailed 

 itinerary in the book mentioned does not touch that island. In 

 Naumannia for 1852 (pp. 50-56) is an article by Hartlaub entitled 

 Ueber einige neue oder weniger bekannte Vogel Amerika's aus brief- 

 lichen Mittheilungen des Herzogs Paul Wilhelm von Wiirttemberg 

 mitgetheilt, in which there is an annotated list of birds recorded by 

 Wiirttemberg in Cuba with occasional references to Haiti. He men- 

 tions observations made at Miragoane, Mirebalais, the hills east of 

 Mirebalais, " Escabobas " and Loma de San Juan. The date " 1829 " 

 is given in connection with some of these statements. 



According to Mulsant and Verreaux, 5 Alexandre Ricord, born in 

 1798 in Baltimore, traveled in 1826 in the Antilles, mainly in Santo 

 Domingo, for the Paris Museum, where he collected many interest- 

 ing specimens, devoting his attention principally to fishes. His name 

 is carried in the genus Riccordia, spelled by Reichenbach with a 

 double c through a slip of the pen. Ricord collected the type of 

 Plagiodontia aedium Cuvier, a curious mammal, among other speci- 

 mens, but nothing has come to our eyes regarding birds that he se- 

 cured, with exception of his description of Loxia haitii* a species of 

 uncertain identity. 



Alcide d'Orbigny in his Voyage Pittoresque dans les deux 

 Ameriques, 1836, pp. 11-24, describes his landing in Port-au-Prince 

 on May 29, 1826, where he was occupied for a week in the city and 



6 Hist. Nat. Ois. Mouch., vol. 2, 1876, p. 76. 

 •Rev. Zool., 1838, p. 167. 



2134—31- 



