NO. 17 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, IQ16 37 
of Samana, there are “many precipitous limestone hills,” which, 
Dr. Abbott writes, are “literally honey-combed with caves. The 
cave (usually inhabited) near the pier of the abandoned railroad is 
full of shell-heaps, and contains many Indian carvings, more or less 
obliterated by smoke and lime deposits.” Here he uncovered two 
hundred or more archeological objects, including terra cotta images, 
fragments of pottery, stone pestles, carved stone plates and similar 
material. 
After exhausting the caves in the vicinity of Samana, Dr. Abbott 
visited the mountains of the interior, where, at El Rio,’ he made a 
most surprising discovery in the bird fauna. He writes “I had 
heard of a very small ‘ parrot’ which lived in flocks in the pines 
Fic. 38.—Skull of Plagiodontia, a rodent once common in 
Haiti and Santo Domingo, but now perhaps extinct. It was 
eaten by the Indians and by the European settlers of the island. 
(Enlarged. ) 
on the pine cones. I suspected a crossbill—said to occur here at 
Jarabacoa, below 2,000 feet, but the pair I shot were at near 5,000 
feet.” The bird proved to be a veritable crossbill and, what was 
most extraordinary, a form closely related to the White-winged 
Crossbill (Loxia leucoptcra), a species restricted in the breeding 
season to the Boreal zone of North America (from Alaska to the 
higher Adirondacks), migrating in winter at rare intervals as far 
south as North Carolina. Red Crossbills, of the Lowxia curvirostra 
* El Rio is “a new settlement formed 16 years ago in the upper valley of the 
Emenoa, which flows into the Yaqui River (del Norte). Elevation about 4,000 
feet. About 20 miles by road from Jarabacoa. There are about 600 to 800 peo- 
ple settled within a few miles of El Rio. No town, only a shop (tienda) and 
a cock-pit. Beautiful and fairly fertile district,” according to Dr. Abbott’s 
descriptive notes. 
