2 86 . General Notes [^^"J 



{Cry»topki/us fulicarius) in South Carolina, makes me tliink tiiat the 

 occurrence of a tiock of at least thirty of these birds on the southern 

 North Carolina coast mav be worth recording. On April 2 or 3, 1896, 

 within a daj' or two of our finding at Morehead City, N. C, the Glaucous 

 •Gull which Dr. Coues recorded in 'The Osprey ', we were shown by the 

 light-keeper of the Cape Lookout Light, about a dozen dead Red 

 Phalaropes which had been killed by striking the light-glass. The 

 keeper, who seemed trustworthy, told us that as many as twenty more 

 exactly like these had been killed two or three nights before, and most of 

 them had been picked up and destroyed. The ten or more which we 

 found, lying in the grass at the foot of the tower, were badly decomposed, 

 and we managed to preserve only two shabby specimens. All that we 

 saw were in transition plumage ; mainly gray and white, but some 

 heavily mottled with red below and with brown on the back. The three 

 we examined were females. 



On March 17, 189S, my father and L with Mr. L. A. Fuertes, saw from 

 & steamer enormous tlocks of Phalaropes, apparently Red, about fifty 

 miles off the coast of northern South Carolina. — Gerald H. Thayer, 

 Monadnock, N. H. 



The Name of the Z&n^\^2, Dove. — In 1801, John Latham described a 

 pigeon from New Holland which he called ' Southern Pigeon ' (Gen. Syn. 

 Bds., Suppl., II, 1801, p. 270), giving it the same year, in another publica- 

 tion, the name Columba fiicridio/ialls (Ind. Orn., Suppl., 1801, p. Ix), and 

 stating that he saw a specimen of this at Mr. Swainson's. Columba 

 meridionalis has until recently been considered as unidentifiable. In 1898, 

 however, Messrs. Forbes and Robinson (Bull. Liverpool Mus., I. 189S, p. 

 36), claimed to identify it with the well known Zenaida Dove {Columba 

 zefiazda ^onap.), on the basis of "three aviary specimens, which have been 

 identified by Latham as his Southern Pigeon (Gen. Hist, viii, p. 28). One 

 of these is the type of his ' female or young,' Soiitherji Pigeon, var. a, 

 and is labelled by Lord Derby ' Columba meridionalis, se ipso judice ' ; the 

 -second is marked, ' Dr. L. considers this an old male.' These prove to be 

 Zenaida zenaida, Bp. The third specimen is inscribed, ' Considered by 

 Dr. L. as a young male.' We have identified this as Zenaida anriculata 

 Des Murs)." 



On turning to Latham's 'General History of Birds,' Vol. VIII, 1823, p. 

 29, we find that, in an addition to his original description of the Southern 

 Pigeon, he mentions the three birds (one '' in the collection of Lord 

 Stanley ") referred to by Forbes and Robinson, and which are doubtless 

 correctly identified b^' these gentlemen, but they are entirely different and 

 additional material to that on which Columba meridionalis was originally 

 based. But this supplemental matter, added twenty-two years after the 

 publication of the original description of Columba meridionalis, does not 

 establish any of the three specimens mentioned by Forbes and Robinson 

 as the type of the original Columba meridionalis, said to have come from 



