2IO Faxon, Abbot" s Drawings of Georgia Birds. jV 



The presence of the Scarlet Ibis among Abbot's drawings of 

 the birds of Georgia establishes, to my mind, a better record 

 for the United States than some of those above mentioned. It 

 is highly improbable that he received a specimen from Central 

 or South America and still more unlikely that he would have 

 interpolated a foreign bird in this series of drawings. For we 

 know from the whole tenor of his work in Georgia that it was 

 his purpose to illustrate the local fauna. 



Of the rarer birds for the latitude of Georgia that are included 

 in the collection may be mentioned the Snowy Owl, the White- 

 winged Crossbill, and the Horned Lark {Otocoris alpestris). 

 The White-winged Crossbill has never to my knowledge been 

 reported from so far south as Georgia. The arctic race of the 

 Horned Lark, athough noted by Catesby 1 as frequenting the 

 sand-hills along the shore of South Carolina in winter, has 

 within a few years been recorded as a novelty from that coast.' 2 



A very remarkable Woodpecker is represented on Plate 48. 

 It is like the male Dryobates borealis except that the red ' cock- 

 ades ' are enlarged so as to form one continuous bright red 

 patch, extending across the nape, as in D. nuttallii, D. vitlosus, 

 etc. The normal male and female D. borealis are figured on 

 Plates 46 and 47 under Wilson's name of Picas querulus. Plate 

 4S is inscribed " Pints n. s. ? " Both Mr. Brewster and Mr. 

 Ridgway assure me that they have never seen the like of this 

 bird. I take it to be a ' sport ' of Dryobates borealis, — the 

 manifestation of a tendency normally latent in this species, but 

 commonlv expressed in allied members of the genus. It is the 

 converse of the condition sometimes seen in D. villosus, when 

 the red occipital band is broken into a pair of spots, — right 

 and left. 



With regard to the period when the drawings were made, we 

 have no evidence beyond the term of Abbot's residence in 

 Georgia, the date 1S10 in the legend under the figure of the 

 Bald Eagle, and the manufacturer's water-marks which appear 

 on the paper used. According to Mr. Scudder, Abbot came 



1 Nat. Hist. Carolina, I, 1731, 32, PI. XXXII. 



2 A. T. Wayne, Auk, X, 1893, 205. 



