88 General Notes. anh 
occurrence in the State according to the records in the museum of the 
University of Kansas was a single specimen taken in Riley Co., February, 
1878, by W. F. Allen. From October 27 of this year to the present date, 
November 20, the Museum has obtained nine specimens, three females 
and six males. I have reports of several that were killed and thrown 
away, and several live specimens were seen by a party from the museum. 
The farmers report that they are killing their full grown chickens, but 
the contents of the stomachs of those received at the museum contained 
only rabbit—C. D. Bunxknr, Museum of the University of Kansas, 
Lawrence, Kansas. 
Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) in Jefferson Co., 
N. Y.— While hunting Grouse and Woodcock near the village of Adams 
Center, Jefferson Co., N. Y., on October 20, 1916, I collected a female 
Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker. I was at once attracted by the call-note 
which was one I had not heard before. This bird is my first record of 
the species during the four or five years I have been observing the birds 
of Adams and the neighboring towns.— Epmunp J. SAWYER, Watertown, 
Nay ¥: 
The Earliest Name for the Nighthawk.— Caprimulgus virginianus 
Gmelin (Syst. Nat., I, ii, 1789, 1028) is the long-established basis for our 
Nighthawk, the sources quoted by this author being Linnzus, Kalm, 
Brisson, Catesby, Edwards, Buffon, Pennant and Latham. The accounts 
of nearly all these writers, except Kalm (who made independent obser- 
vations in New Jersey) are easily traced back to Catesby or Edwards. 
Catesby (Nat. Hist. Carolina, II, 1743, Appendix, 16, pl. 16) described and 
figured a bird from Virginia, which is unquestionably the Nighthawk, but 
the habits ascribed to it are those of the Whip-poor-will. Edwards (Nat. 
Hist. Birds, II, 1747, 63, pl. 63) gave a much better description and figure 
of probably the same individual, with which “‘ Mr. Mark Catesby obliged ”’ 
him. Both Catesby and Edwards introduced rictal bristles in their figures, 
probably because the only species then known possessed them, and the 
characters of the genus Caprimulgus required them as one of the features 
to distinguish it from Hirundo. . Edwards, however, made no mention of - 
rictal bristles in the minute description furnished by him. 
So much for the basis of Gmelin’s Caprimulgus virginianus, supposedly 
the earliest name for the Nighthawk. Some years before Gmelin, how- 
ever, J. R. Forster published his ‘ Catalogue of the Animals of North 
America.’ This was issued in 1771, and is of little importance at this 
date, but it contains two or three new names for birds, one of them being 
Capr{imulgus] minor, p. 13, based on “ C. III. 16.,’’ meaning Catesby (as 
Forster explains on p. 5), Appendix, p. 16. As this Catesby reference is 
the chief basis of Gmelin’s name, it follows that Caprimulgus minor Forster 
is of equal pertinency, and our Nighthawk should be known as Chordeiles 
minor minor, while the subspecies from the Greater Antilles, now called 
