78 General Notes. [^ 



— depending apparently much upon the degree of anger to which the 

 bird has been excited by its tormentors. My captive behaved much in 

 the same way when held up by the legs in front of another person, and 

 one had to exercise great care to avoid its quick and well-delivered 

 thrusts. At the end of three or four days, it having eaten nothing up to 

 that time, nor drunk any water, I offered it a live medium-sized frog to 

 try its appetite. It promptly laid out that poor batrachian by a few tell- 

 ing stabs given with its beak, sending one home every time the animal 

 moved a limb. Immediately after killing it, it was picked up with the 

 bill, and throwing back its head the bird attempted to swallow the morsel. 

 In this it failed after several trials, and finally abandoned it for good and 

 all. This Bittern lived twelve days without ever having eaten a single 

 thing or swallowed a drop of water. It passed several thin, cream- 

 colored evacuations from the bowels every twenty-four hours, and died, 

 apparently without any pain, in a squatting position, absolutely un- 

 ruffled in plumage, on the evening of the twelfth day — a plucky fowl to 

 the instant of its death. 



There is one very interesting point to observe here, and it is the fact 

 that the lower the position a bird occupies in the system the greater the 

 length of time it seems to be enabled to go without partaking of any 

 nutriment whatever. Gannets and Cormorants will live nearly a month 

 without either eating or drinking anything, while on the other hand any 

 of the small Passeres will succumb in a few days to such treatment. In 

 this connection it is important to note that many lizards will live several 

 months without consuming a morsel of food or a drop of water. This 

 may be another particular in which the lower birds approach their rep- 

 tilian kin. 



While dissecting this Bittern with the view of saving its skeleton, and 

 observing what else I could in its anatomy, I found that it possessed a 

 peculiar arrangement and modification of the vertebrae and certain 

 muscles in the upper third of the neck, much as we find it in Plotus 

 anhiiiga, and in a less marked degree in Cormorants, the Gannets, and 

 Pelicans. This modification, which is associated with the power of the 

 birds mentioned (especially the Darters and Bitterns) of giving a quick 

 thrust with the beak, has been well described by Garrod, a paper among 

 his 'Collected Scientific Memoirs,' and by Donitz, and is well worthy of 

 close study and comparison. Garrod does not mention having observed 

 it in Botaurus and its allies. — R. W. Shufeldt, Takoma, D.C. 



Tringa alpina on Long Island, New York. — On Sept. 15, 1S92, I secured 

 a European Dunlin at Shinnecock Bay. During a week's trip I secured 

 only one T. a. pacifica. The specimen was identified through the kind- 

 ness of Mr. F. M. Chapman of the American Museum of Natural History. 

 Coues says of this species, "A straggler to Greenland"; Ridgway, "Acci 

 dental or casual in eastern North America (west side of Hudson Bay) ." 

 Its occurrence in the United States has heretofore seemed doubtful. — 

 Curtis Clay Young, Brooklyn, N. T. 



