"""KIV"'] General Notes. IO5 



Mazatlan taken by Mr. P. O. Simons in December, 1896. — Leverett M. 

 LoOMis, Califorfita Academy of Sciences, San Fraticisco. 



Mother Carey's Chicken. — Knowing that the Wilson's Petrel {Oceanites 

 oceanicus) migrates for the bixeding season, through the autumn until 

 March perhaps, to the South Atlantic, I was interested to note during my 

 return voyage from Liverpool — November 17, I think it was — in mid- 

 Atlantic, that the familiar Petrels which I had hitherto seen only solitary 

 or unattached, were now flying in flocks of two dozen or so. The bird 

 seemed to be the Mother Carey's Chicken of our New England summer 

 coast waters, but did not appear singly. I could detect no special south- 

 ward movement, but the ship might well' have interrupted this course 

 among birds which tly so low. It might be interesting to add my observa- 

 tion, that both in August and in November, the only other bird which 

 might be met with at any hour of the voyage from landfall to land- 

 fall was a Shearwater, presumably Piijfijius major. 



If anyone has observations counter to this last I should gladly hear of 

 them. — Reginald C. Robbins, Boston, Mass. 



The Yellow-billed Tropic Bird in the Hawaiian Islands. — This Tropic 

 Bird {Pkaeto7i amertcanus) or ' Kooi,' as the natives call it, is rather com- 

 mon upon the windward side of the island of Hawaii where it breeds in 

 holes in the cliffs. I have secured three specimens and have seen many 

 more. So far it is the only Tropic Bird I have been able to discover on 

 Hawaii, although there is little reason to doubt that both P. cBtkereus and 

 P. rubricauda occur, at least casually. None of the present day natives 

 of Hawaii whom I have questioned appear to know anything of the Red- 

 tailed Tropic Bird, although Mr. Wilson states that he shot several speci- 

 mens of this species in the caldera of Kilauea. Both Kauai and Niihau 

 are inhabited by P. rubricauda, while, according to Wilson, Mr. Perkins 

 found/*. (^/^ere«5 breeding in the cliffs about Honolulu. It thus appears 

 that the Hawaiian Islands are unusually favored in having three resident 

 species of Tropic Birds. — H. W. Henshaw, Hilo, Hawaii. 



The Old Squaw at San Francisco. — A female Harelda hyemalis (No. 

 12892, Calif. Acad. Sci.) was taken by Dr. John Hornung at San Francisco, 

 December 26, 1S98. Notices of the occurrence of this duck in California 

 are so few as to render an additional capture worthy of note. — Leverett 

 M. LoOMis, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. 



The Emperor Goose in the Interior of California. — In the fall of 1S95, 

 Mr. Lyman Belding presented to the California Academy of Sciences an 

 immature specimen of Pkilacte canagica, which had been shot by a mar- 

 ket hunter on November i of that year near Gridley, in Butte County, on 

 Butte Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. 



