1S85.] Cooke on Rare Birds in the Mississippi Valley. T. I 



an experiment ; but we doubt tbe accuracy of this narration, 

 and we should want to hear the subject of such an experiment 

 really sing before believing that the syrinx is the seat of tone 

 production. It would be enormously difficult to keep a bird 

 alive after such an operation, to say nothing as to its regaining 

 a condition of full health, or a condition in which it would 

 feel like singing. A mere production of audible sound from 

 the inferior larynx would not be accepted as the song tones of 

 the bird. Man can produce a tone by the vibrations of the lips, 

 but the vocal ligaments are the voice phonators for all that. The 

 syrinx of a bird may be able to make a noise, but that does not 

 prove that the superior larynx has nothing to do in the formation 

 of the song of birds. However, we are open to conviction, and 

 would gladly be set right by proof positive that our opinion 

 as to this matter is wroner. 



NOTES ON THE OCCURRENCE OF CERTAIN 

 BIRDS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



BY W. W. COOKE. 



During the progress of my studies of migration, I have been in 

 correspondence with most of the active ornithologists in the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley. Among the notes they have contributed are 

 some which seem worthy of being put on record. They may 

 not all of them be first records for their section of country, but 

 the occurrences are at places remote enough from the ordinary 

 habitat to be' worthy of note. 



Hawk Owl in Northeastern Mississippi. — Among a list of birds occur- 

 ring at Corinth, Miss . sent me by Dr. Rawlings Young, was the name of 

 the Hawk Owl (Sitrt/ia funerea). Upon asking for the particulars of its 

 capture, I received the following letter: — ■ 



•In reply to your question, I would say that I have never heard of but 

 one being killed near here and that I shot myself. In 18S2 I was shooting 

 .Qjail over a brace of setters in thick sedge grass, three or four hundred 

 yards from the timber, and while working up a scattered bevy the dogs 

 pointed. Walking in, the Hawk Owl, much to mv astonishment, got up 

 from the grass, right under the dogs' noses. As he went off I cut him 

 down and had no trouble in identifying him from the cuts seen in Wilson." 



