1887.] Browne on New England Glossy Ibises. qq 



cipal of the Academy there, mounted by him and placed in his 

 cabinet. On the subsequent appointment of Professor Jenks as 

 Curator of the Museum of Brown University, at Providence, 

 R. I., he transferred them to the collection of that Institution, 

 where they now are. (Jenks, in lit., 1886.) 



No. 5. The Middletown, Conn., bird. — The circumstance of 

 being recently enabled to give the exact date of this specimen, 

 till now unknown, or at any rate not recorded, led me to look up 

 the materials for this article. In examining a packet of manu- 

 script, etc., which had been undisturbed since my college days, 

 I came upon a newspaper clipping giving the particulars of the 

 capture, over signature, as follows : 



"Middletown, Conn., May 16, 1850 [cf. N. E. Bird Life, II, 

 p. 256 — Dr. Coues's surmise as to date thus shown to be well 

 founded]. "A Glossy Ibis, Ibis falcinella [sic] was shot at 

 this place May 9, time of a high flood. Length, 28 in., bill 5 in., 

 stands 18 in. high. The man who shot it remarked how tame it 

 was. It has been carefully preserved, and is now in my cabinet. 

 By the papers we learn that a similar bird was shot in Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., on the 8th. Very rare in the United States ; this is 

 the first to our notice in Connecticut. Bonaparte was the first 

 to show that Tantalus mexicanus of Ord was the Ibis falcinella 

 of Europe. — J. Barratt." 



This is undoubtedly the specimen spoken of by Merriam as be- 

 ing now in the Museum of Wesleyan University, Middletown. 



In review, the probabilities are that a flock of six of these birds 

 arrived in Southeastern New England on or about May 7 ; divid- 

 ing into threes, one trio alighted at Middleboro', and the other at 

 Cambridge. Five of them were 'taken in,' as above, during the 

 ensuing week. It is probable that the Middletown bird was the 

 survivor of the Middleboro' trio, and that the Concord bird (the 

 only one seen there) was one of the two that escaped at Cam- 

 bridge, leaving one unaccounted for. which very likely was 

 wounded when his companion fell at Fresh Pond, and perished 

 somewhere unobserved. The distance between the two extremes, 

 Middletown and Concord, is only about ninety miles. 



With the exception of two instances (Southern New Hamp- 

 shire, 1858, and Nantucket, 1869 — both solitary birds as far as 

 known), twenty-eight years almost to a day elapsed before the 

 Glossy Ibis again appears in New England records. May 4 and 



