CD Merriam, Preliminary Report on Bird Migration. [January 



hand of Mr. Otto Widmann, with explanatory' text by Professor 



Cooke. 



The Mississippi Valley — :i mighty river basin penetrating the 

 heart of a great continent from a semi-tropical climate on the 

 South well into the cold-temperate regions of the North, and 

 unobstructed by mountain barriers or large bodies of water to 

 deflect the current of bird life from the smooth channel through 

 which it flows, yet sufficiently diversified to present a variety of 

 minor physiographical conditions — affords peculiar facilities for 

 the study of many phases of bird migration, and is well worthy 

 of the labor bestowed upon it in this report. 



The Chairman takes pleasure in announcing two additions to 

 the personnel of the Committee. Mr. William Dutcher has 

 been appointed Superintendent of Long Island, New York, in 

 which district he has for several years been successfully at work. 

 The readers of 'The Auk' are already familiar with some of the 

 results of his investigations, but the greater portion is still 

 unpublished. 



Mr. Lyman S. Foster has been appointed Superintendent of 

 the Lighthouse District of Spanish America, and has already 

 brought together a large amount of valuable material. Mr. 

 Foster began the collection of data from this source indepen- 

 dently of the Committee. On the 25th of April, 1884, he mailed 

 a circular-letter, inclosing return blanks, to the keepers of two 

 hundred and fifty-five lighthouses in the West Indies, Central, 

 and South America. The responses were so numerous and sat- 

 isfactory that, on the 25th of July, he mailed a second letter, 

 containing more detailed instructions, and accompanied bv a 

 little book, in the Spanish language, as a guide to the keepers 

 in their ornithological investigations. A very voluminous poly- 

 glot correspondence followed, and is still progressing. It was 

 ascertained that large numbers of birds are annually killed 1>\ 

 striking the lighthouses on both coasts of South America ami in 

 the West Indies — particularly along the northern coast of Cuba. 

 Floientina Alvares, keeper of the lighthouse at Paredon Grande, 

 Cuba, picked up more than a hundred birds one morning. 

 Pedro Maury reports that two hundred and seventy-eight birds 

 killed themselves against the lighthouse near Cardenas during 

 the night of October 4-5, 18S4. Francisco Megide writes from 

 Bahia de Cadiz, ••one night an infinity of birds struck, and the 



