V0L ™o VI1 ] General Notes 451 



his desire to display himself, for at no time did he withdraw the white 

 ruffs into concealment. Several times for an instant a second Bittern, 

 presumably the female, appeared in view, but only to become hidden 

 at once behind one of the clumps of bushes. On the other hand, the male 

 bird made no use of the bushes to screen himself. The distance travelled 

 by this male bird during our observation was but a few rods, for he moved 

 first in one direction and then in the opposite, first towards us and then 

 away from us, and was only slightly further removed from us when we 

 proceeded on our way, than when we first saw him. Our position had 

 been about a hundred yards distant. 



Mr. William Brewster's very interesting detailed description 1 of the dis- 

 play of these white nuptial plumes as witnessed by him and friends in the 

 Great Meadows in Concord in April, 1910, then for the first time observed 

 by him, presents the exhibition quite as we ten years later were fortunate 

 enough to observe it in this Westwood swamp. — Horace W. Wright, 

 107 Pinckney St., Boston, Mass. 



The Knot in Montana. — On October 4, 1915, I found the mummified 

 body of a Knot (Tringa canutus) on Woody Island in Lake Bowdoin, 

 Montana (nine miles east of Malta), among remains of a large number 

 of shorebirds and other species that had perished from disease. From 

 the appearance of these bodies it appeared that the birds had died near 

 the end of August or during the early part of September of that same year. 

 All were lying on a muddy shore just above the water line, apparently 

 where they had dragged themselves out of the water after becoming sick. 

 Like the other specimens examined the Knot was not in suitable con- 

 dition for preservation as a skin, and so was prepared as a skeleton. It 

 is now in the osteological collections of the U. S. National Museum. This 

 is apparently the first published record of the Knot in Montana. — Alex- 

 ander Wetmore, Biological Survey, Washington, D. C. 



Tringa Auct. versus Calidris Anon.— It has been conclusively shown 

 by Mr. G. M. Mathews (Novit. Zool., XVIII, No. 1, June 17, 1911, 

 pp. 5-6) that the generic name Tringa Linnaeus must be transferred to 

 the group commonly called Helodromas Kaup. This leaves the Knot, 

 Tringa canutus Linnaeus, without a generic name, and Mr. Mathews 

 proposes the use of Canutus Brehm (Naturg. Vog. Deutschl., 1831, p. 653; 

 type, Tringa canutus Linnaeus). Dr. C. W. Richmond has called atten- 

 tion (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mvs., LIII, August 16, 1917, pp. 581-582) to a 

 still earlier publication of this name by an anonymous reviewer of Bech- 

 stein's Ornithologische Taschenbuch. This name, however, must give 

 way to Calidris of the same anonymous reviewer (Allg. Lit.-Zeitung, 1804, 

 II, No. 168, June 8, 1804, col. 542), which has anteriority over Canutus 

 and which was introduced as follows: 



1 'Auk,' XXVIII, Jan. 1911. Pp. 90-100. 



