^°|g^I^] Generiil Notes. 87 



GENERAL NOTES. 



The Nostrils in Young Cormorants. — Through the kindness of Mr. R. 

 C. McGregor and Mr. Curtis Claj Young I have come into the possession 

 of a considerable series of crania of Cormorants, from a very early stage 

 of incubation up to the twenty-eighth day after hatching. In the old- 

 est of these skulls the external nostrils are still open, and the bones of the 

 palate have not coalesced, and the probabilities are, as already stated, that 

 the external nostrils close about the time the young Cormorants take to 

 the water and begin to feed themselves. — F. A. Lucas, Washington, D. C, 



Labrador Duck. — In the Museum at Amiens in France, which is 

 located in a temporary and very unworthy building by the river, I was 

 surprised to come across a fine adult male Labrador Duck, Camptolaimus 

 labradorius, in good preservation. It was unknown to Mr. William 

 Dutcher when revising the list of extant specimens (Auk, 1891, p. 201), 

 but I conclude that it is probably one of the specimens which he men- 

 tions to have been sent to Europe by Mr. John Akhurst prior to 1850 {^op. 

 ci't., 1893, p. 270). — J. II. GuRNEY, Kes-iVick Hall, Norzuic//, England. 



Nesting of the Larger White-cheeked Goose {Branta canadensis occi- 

 dentalis) in Okanogan Co., Wash. — In May, 1896, a nest of this species 

 was located in the gorge of the Columbia River due east of Chelan. A 

 visit paid to it on May 13 led me through a wild stretch where the cliffs 

 press in upon the swirling river. I began to walk softly over a rocky 

 point which projected over the stream at about fifty feet above high- 

 water mark. I had seen a Goose push out from the shore below and 

 hoped his mate might be on the nest. I was not to be disappointed, for 

 as I rose over the crest of the rocky point the mother Goose flew off with 

 a loud squawk, and I had in addition a vision of something green flying 

 through the air. In a shelf of rock commanding the river below three 

 green goslings, newly hatched, were resting on a bed of down. Pale 

 green egg shells were lying about the nest as a reminder of what might 

 have been. The green thing " flying through the air " proved to be a 

 fourth gosling which Mother Goose had knocked off the nest in her haste, 

 but I rescued him from a cleft in the rock twenty feet below, where he 

 had been fortunately caught before striking the fierce current of the river, 

 and returned him apparently none the worse for his tumble. The nest- 

 lings were in general of a bright grass-green color mottled with a shade 

 of olive. The nest was entirely composed of soft down from the Goose's 

 breast. 



The Larger White-cheeked Geese are the first birds to arrive in the 

 Chelan valley in February, and they leave the wheat fields, reluctantly 

 enough, in December. Their breeding in the county seems to be alto- 



