^°i897^^] General Notes. 203 



Uria lomvia in South Carolina. — My young friends Rowland and 

 Herbert Nowell have sent me a specimen of Briinnich's Murre taken near 

 Anderson, S. C, Dec. 19, 1896. Anderson is the seat of the county of the 

 same name, in the extreme northwestern portion of the State, lat. about 

 34° 36' N., long. 5°3S'W. from Washington, not far below the Blue Ridge, 

 and about 196 miles from the nearest point on the sea-coast, which would 

 be in the vicinity of Beaufort. The bird was captured about three miles 

 southwest from the city, in an open field near a creek. It was found by a 

 hunting dog, which pointed it and then ran up to it ; the bird pecked at 

 the dog, and also at the man who came to pick it up. It could not fly, 

 though it showed no bruises or evidences of injury when, having been 

 kept alive till the 23d, and fed on raw meat, it died and was skinned. 

 The specimen is a bird of the year, identical with various others I have 

 compared in the U. S. National Museum. Bill black, small, perfectly 

 smooth, with a rather sharper gonydial angle than usual ; eyes brown, 

 feet light brown. Length 15.75 > extent 28.75; wing 7.70; tail 2, rounded; 

 culmen 1.20; gonys 0.63; height of bill 0.42; width 0.27; tarsus 1.30; 

 middle toe and claw 1.96. (Fresh measurements by the Messrs. Nowell.) 

 Plumage as usual for this age and season. 



This is, I think, the first record of the species for South Carolina. The 

 individual is one of what must have been a large flight of these birds 

 about the middle of last December. ' Forest and Stream' of Feb. 6, 1897, 

 notes one taken Dec. 17, 1S96, and another Dec. 19, 1896, both at Cape 

 Charles, Va., where also was a King Eider taken Jan. 2, 1897. I hear of a 

 number of other cases of Briinnich's Murre beyond its ordinary range 

 about this time; some of them will doubtless reach 'The Auk' with this 

 one. On looking up the weather record, I find that there was an area of 

 atmospheric depression at Charleston, S. C, at 8 \.m. of Dec. 15; it 

 travelled rapidly northeastward on the 15th and i6th, and was severe 

 along the coast from N. C. to Maine on the night of the 15th, on the 

 i6th, 17th, and part of the i8th. This storm-center evidently caused the 

 dispersion of comparatively large numbers of northern sea-birds inland, 

 far beyond their normal flights. — Elliott Coues, Was/ntig-ton, D. C. 



The Terns of Dyer's and the Weepecket Islands. — On June 23, 1896, I 

 landed on Dyer's Island in Narragansett Bay, a small island of some 

 twenty acres in extent and covered on the lowlands with beach grass and 

 on the uplands with blackberry (^Riibtis canadensis) and bayberry (^Myrica 

 cert/era). 



Before landing I could see a few Terns hovering above the island ; there 

 proved to be, however, some ten pairs inhabiting it, as a number of counts 

 made twenty birds in the air after I landed, and I believe that they do not 

 wander far during the day. 



The Terns were all Wilson's {Sterna htrundo), and I found but one nest 

 on the island, which contained three eggs; it was a typical nest, — a few- 

 grasses on the sand amid the beach grass. The eggs would have hatched 



