^°'i9if ^"^l General Notes. ' 255 



8, and cf Jan. 19, 1912, shot at a point about seven miles up the river from 

 Brownsville, establishes this species as a resident. Of the nine or ten forms 

 of Herons ranging into the Lower Valley, it is the most thinly distributed. 



An immature Golden Eagle {Aquila chnjsaetos) sex unknown, was shot 

 near San Benito, Tex., 19 miles N. W. from Brownsville, early in January, 

 1912, by H. N. Prentiss. It was mounted and is now on exhibition at a 

 drugstore in Brownsville, labeled as Mexican Eagle. The nearest locaHty 

 known to me where this species occurs as a resident, is in the mountains, 

 some distance south of Monterey, Mexico, approximately 200 miles 

 distant. 



On Jan. 4, 1912, I secured near Brownsville an adult female Long-eared 

 Owl {Asio wilsonianus) my first record here. 



Several years ago (Nov. 1909), I felt certain I had espied a Green-tailed 

 Towhee (Oreospiza chlorura) on the ground in the dense chaparral. Now 

 I feel sure that my identification was correct, for on Jan. 7, 1912, I collected 

 an adult female near Brownsville. It may prove to be a more or less com- 

 mon winter visitant, for it is easy to confound it with the Texas Sparrow 

 {Arremonops rufivirgaius rufivirgatus) in Ufe. Its superficial appearance 

 in life, and its habits, closely resemble those of the latter, although the 

 Green-tailed Towhee is a much more confiding bird. 



The Western Tanager {Piranga ludoviciana) is again wintering in small 

 numbers. I secured an adult male on Dec. 12, 1911, for specific date. 

 Last year it was noted through the winter months up to March. Several 

 examples secured here during winter of 1910-11 are in the collection of 

 Dr. J. Dwight, Jr. — Austin Paul Smith, Brownsville, Texas. 



The Names "Purple Finch," "Mavis," and " Highole."— In my 



article on The Current English Names of North American Birds (' The 

 Auk,' Vol. XXVI, Oct. 1909, p. 358) I referred to the name " Purple " as 

 applied to Carpodacus purpureus as "a monumental witness of an ina- 

 bility to properly discriminate either between two very different shades of 

 color or in the use of the right word." The species in question appears 

 under this name in Catesby (Nat. Hist, of Carolina, Vol. I, p. 41). From 

 the letter of a correspondent under date of May 1, 1911, I quote the 

 following — "I copied some of your article and had it printed in a Worcester, 

 Mass., paper — The Telegram, using your name and giving you the credit 

 of it. In yesterday's paper a Webster, Mass., bird-lover takes exception 

 to the statement that the Purple Finch is wrongly named as to color, saying 

 that it is the color of Tyrian purple, and evidently meaning that it was 

 named for an ancient or classic color, and not the modern purple. Do you 

 agree to this ? " — I certainly do agree to it, and I wrote my correspondent 

 thanking her for the correction. The gorgeous Tyrian purple, a dye 

 obtained from certain gastropod molluscs {Purpura and Murex), was a 

 symbol of wealth and rank among the early peoples of the eastern Mediter- 

 ranean. In Murray (The Oxford Dictionary) under the word " purple " 

 there is this definition — " Tyrian purple, which was actually crimson, 



