■5 2 General Notes. [October 



Curlew, as they labelled it 'Long-billed Curlew.' If they had been ac- 

 quainted with its identity, it is fair to assume they would have labelled it 

 correctly, from the greater interest that would have been attached. We 

 can also assume with certainty that Mr. Gebhard, in whose handwriting 

 the label is, when the specimen was purchased, asked the taxidermist, Mr. 

 Hurst, the locality the bird came from, and at the time when the fact was 

 fresh in the mind of Mr. Hurst the locality 'Long Island' was added to 

 the record. Mr. Hurst could have had no object in substituting a speci- 

 men of the European Curlew for our own form in the New York State 

 collection, as a specimen of the Long-billed Curlew would be much 

 easier to obtain, and further, the cost of a specimen of the European form 

 would have been much greater. That he could have made the substi- 

 tution knowingly is out of the question, as he was a man of the utmost 

 probity of character and one whose statements could be depended upon 

 implicitly. To further substantiate the fact that this specimen was taken 

 in America it was submitted to Mr. William Palmer, taxidermist of the 

 National Museum, Washington, D. C., and Mr. Jenness Richardson, tax- 

 idermist of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, who 

 were present at the Congress, and they without hesitation, after examin. 

 ation, pronounced the specimen to have been mounted from a bird freshly- 

 killed and not from a dried skin. — Wm. Dutcher, New York City. 



Notes on Syrnium occidentale. — Some fifty miles N. N. E. of San 

 Diego Bay is a mountain known locally as Smith Mountain, or some- 

 times as Mt Palomar. It is the culmination of a broken, mountainous 

 region, rising to an altitude of perhaps 6,000 feet, though some distance 

 to the north and southeast are higher peaks. On the mountain are a 

 number of small valleys which are often partially bordered by heavy 

 forests of fir, cedar and oak, especially on the northern slopes. 



Last June a small party of us spent a few days on Smith Mountain, se- 

 lecting one of the smaller uninhabited valleys as our camp ground. The 

 fii-st night there two ladies of the party who, unaccustomed to camp- 

 ing out, were kept awake by sounds that they thought were made by a fox 

 or an Owl, they could not tell which. I had heard the note of an Owl 

 during the night, but sleepily decided that it was the Great Horned Owl. 

 The next night I did not sleep so soundly, and heard the sounds distinctly 

 and knew that I was listening to a bird note new to me. From the sounds 

 made I tliought that there was a pair of the birds as one set of notes was 

 deeper than the other. We were camped at the base of a very steep slope 

 at the mouth of a Utile gulch. The Owls appeared to be up toward the 

 head of the gulch. In the morning I explored the locality from which the 

 sounds came, and found among the large trees a dense growth of small 

 firs and cedars of a quarter of an acre or so in extent which I thought was 

 where the Owls probably were. Before dark I took my stand at the lower 

 edge of the thicket and soon heard the hissing note of a young Owl, ap- 

 parently calling for food. I was cautiously working my way up the steep 



