^86 General Notes. [kpril 



GENERAL NOTES 



A Loon (Gavia immer) Caught on a Fishing Line. — November 17, 

 1918, Mr. Fred Lynn, of Branchport, caught a female Loon while tx-olling 

 for bass in Lake Keuka. He had just felt his line ease up when the Loon 

 broke water about a hundred feet behind and began to shake its head. 

 At the same time he thought that he had a bite and began to pull in his 

 line when he saw at once that he had "hooked" the Loon. It had swal- 

 lowed the bait, a minnow, which was on a small Kinzie hook and in its 

 struggles got tangled in the line and was landed with difficulty. As soon 

 as it was landed in the boat it struggled and set up a great cry. It was 

 impossible to dislodge the hook so Mr. Lynn cut the line as far down the 

 Loon's neck as possible and gave the Loon to Mr. Albert Boyd who lived 

 nearby. Mr. Boyd kept it just one day, then returned it to the lake. It 

 dived at once and after coming up way out in the lake was last seen swim- 

 ming rapidly away. Both Mr. Lynn and Mr. Boyd are well known to 

 me and I vouch for the truth of the above. — Verdi Burtch, Branchport, 

 N. Y. 



Intestinal Caeca in the Anhinga. — Intestinal caeca in Anhinga an- 

 hinga seem subject in different individuals to variation in development, 

 so that there has been some discrepancy and uncertainty in descriptions 

 of them. In the following note is given a brief account of a few speci- 

 mens that I have examined with some discussion of observations made 

 by others. 



In an immature male Anhinga, hatched in the National Zoological 

 Gardens, that died when about six months old from the effects of an ill- 

 advised meal of sand, I found two caeca, each about four mm. long. They 

 were developed as small nodules partly embedded in the wall of the in- 

 testine, 125 mm. from the anus. While both caeca were well-formed, 

 firm, and rounded, the one on the right side was slightly larger than tLv. 

 one on the left. From the inside these blind-guts appeared as shallow 

 pockets in the intestinal wall with their inner, anterior margins somewhat 

 thickened, more opaque in color than the surrounding tissue and per 

 ceptible as slight projections to the sense of touch. The rightpocket 

 was about one millimeter deep while the left one was slightly less. 



The intestine (preserved in formalin) of another bird collected, ^y" 

 Francis Harper in the Okefinokee Swamp had two caeca, one of whicn? § 

 represented merely by a slight, thickened ridge in the intestinal WiL*. 

 third specimen — an adult male that I killed in the mangrove swamps 

 behind Cape Sable, Florida — when examined in the flesh had two caeca 

 barely indicated as slight thickenings in the intestine that were almost 

 imperceptible from the outside. The lower part of the intestine of this 

 bird was placed in alcohol at the time but now shows no indication of the 

 caeca even when examined minutely with the aid of a low power mag- 



