^"IsJz'^J General Notes. 225 



five feet distant from mv chair, and I noted at once that he looked Hke a 

 wild bird, his ruffled pkimage being in prefect condition, unfrayed and 

 unstained. In a moment he caught sight of me and flew away. 



A heavy snow-storm set in the next day. It was followed within the 

 week by another. Wintry weather prevailed generally up to January 29. 

 On that day I was told by a neighbor — Edward Woodman, Esq. — that 

 he believed a Mockingbird had been visiting his grounds for several daj's. 

 There, on January 31,1 saw the bird again. He was rather shy and quite 

 silent, and soon flew away. 



I published a notice of this interesting winter visitor in the Portland 

 * Daily Press ' of February 2, hoping, if he were an escaped cage bird, 

 that the fact would thus be brought out. Nothing, however, was elicted. 

 Enquiries of local bird fanciers also failed to lead to the knowledge of 

 any lost pet bird. 



I now met with tiie wanderer nearly every day. About three o'clock of 

 the afternoon of February 11, the sun shining warmly in a still, crisp air, 

 he took up a position in the top of a tall elir. before the same window from 

 which I fii-st saw him, and sang loudly for a few moments when he was 

 apparently frightened away by passers-by. On February 15, I saw him 

 for the last time, feeding on the berries of a mountain-ash. Four days 

 later, — just one month from his first appearance, — Mrs. Charles J. Chap- 

 man, a neighbor and an entirely competent witness, reported to me that 

 he had that morning visited her grounds in search of mountain-ash 

 berries. 



1 have been able to find but one previous record of a supposed wild 

 Mockingbird in Maine, — a verj' indefinite note by Mr. G. A. Boardman 

 in the 'American Naturalist,' Vol. V, April, 1S71, p. 121. It is this note, 

 apparently, to which reference is made in 'New England Bird Life,' 

 Vol. I, p. 62. — Nathan Clifford Brown, Porthuid, Me. 



Turdus lawrencii Coues. — In 187S, George N. Lawrence described a 

 new Thrush from the upper Amazon, as Turdus bruntieus} evidently 

 unaware that the same name had been previously applied by Brewer, in 

 1852, to the North American species now known as Turdus fuscescens. A 

 year later. Dr. Coues published the third instalment of his Ornithological 

 Bibliography, in which he inserted the title of Lawrence's paper with the 

 following comment : " N. B. There is more than one Turdus brunneus 

 of earlier authors. The present belongs to the section of the genus 

 including T. leucomelas, albiventris, &c. If a proper Turdus, stet Turdus 

 latvrencii, nobis, hoc loco, species renovata."- Turdus law reHci'i seems 

 to have been overlooked by subsequent writers, and is not mentioned 

 even in Seebohm's Monograph of the Turdidie (Brit. Mus. Cat. Birds, V, 



' Ibis, 4th Sen, II, Jan., 1878, p. 57, pi. i. 



2 Bull. U. S. Geol. & Geog. Surv. Territories, V, No. 4, Sept. 30, 1879, P- 

 570. 



29 



