^"IsS^^] General Notes. 3 1 5 



1. We have done well in separating Diomedeidse ' as a family apart from 

 Procellariidse, and also in declining to raise Oceanitinte to full family 

 rank. While we may not follow Mr. Salvin to the length of recognizing 

 Puffin idae as a family (though he certainly gives some good characters, 

 cranial and other), it is quite true that we must adopt several more 

 subfamilies than now appear on our List : 



a. FuLMARiN.^E. Equivalent to the Fulmares and Prionea; of my 



early papers; including among our genera ZJrt^/'/o//. I failed to 

 recognize the real character of this group, which is the lamel- 

 lirostral bill, seen at its best in the exotic genus Prion. The 

 lamellie are obsolete or hardlj- evident in the true Fulmars, but 

 easily seen in Daption, a form which connects the extremes 

 perfectly. 



b. PuFFiNiN^E. Equivalent to the PuffiiicK and CT^strelatese of my 



early papers; which two groups come sufficiently near together. 

 None of these birds have any lamellation of the bill, but all 

 share basipterygoids with the Fulmarina'. 



c. Procellariin.e. Restricted to the short-legged " Stormy " Petrels. 



d. OcEANiTiN.E. The remarkably grallatorial " Stormy" Petrels, as 



they stand at present in the A. O. U. List. 



2. Priocella and Priofintis are perfectly good genera, the former of 

 Fulmarinie, the latter of Puffininae. They have stood as such in the 

 ' Key ' since 1SS4, and should never have been degraded. Priocella, in 

 fact, is so different from Fulmariis, with which the A. O. U. combines it, 

 that Mr. Salvin puts it in the other subfamily. 



3. Cymodroma should not have replaced Fregetta — a word which is 

 sufficiently different from Fregata, according to our orthographic (or 

 rather cacographic) rules. Our canon on the subject does not permit us 

 to rule out names which are differently spelled, if more than grammatical 

 gender of terminal inflection be involved : witness Leptotila, etc. 



4. Puffinus stricklandi. I think it very likely that, as held by Mr. 

 Salvin, all the large Sooty Shearwaters must be united under P. griseus. 

 But if we propose to separate the Atlantic bird from that of the Pacific, 

 its name is P.fuliginosns. For, though there are several cases of prior 

 use of the term Procellaria fidigittosa, for various birds of different 

 genera, I find no use of Puffinus fuliginosus for any species prior to 

 Strickland, 1832 ; and certainly preoccupation of a specific name in one 

 genus never debars its use in another genus. The earliest use of 

 Procellaria fiiliginosa appears to be by Gmelin, 17S8, for the Sooty Petrel 

 of Latham, now Ocea>iodroma fuliginosa ; but this in no wise affects the 

 standing of Puffinus fuliginosus. — Elliott Coues, Washington, D. C. 



' Still more distinct from other Tuhiiiares are the exotic Pdecanoidida, the 

 full family rank of which I indicated in Pr. Phila. Acad., 186S, p. 54 ; and I 

 should not have degraded this group in later writings. 



