within the Limits of the United States. 451 



bill in the form of a crescent. Satisfied in my own mind that 

 it was a young male of Bucephala Islandica^ I told him so, and 

 desired him to keep a sharp look-out for another. Soon after 

 he showed me a fine adult male of that species which he had 

 obtained the day previous. On inquiring if there were no 

 more, he was not sure, so I went to the Washington Market 

 mjself, and found there were still hanging at the stall two adult 

 females and a young male, along with three females of the 

 common species. The market-man said they came from out 

 west, in all probability from the neighborhood of one of the 

 great lakes, and both species coming together, I suppose that 

 they were in company before they were killed. 

 • Barrow's Golden Eye was first described, I believe, by 

 Gmelin in his Syst. Katur. ITSS, p. 541, under the name of 

 Anas Islandica^ and by Swainson and Richardson in the Fauna 

 Boreali Americana by the appellation of Clangida Barrovii, or 

 Rocky Mountain Garrot. 



Audubon considered it but a variety of our common species, 

 and placed the names given by the above authors among its 

 synonyms. 



Macgillivray also, in his History of British Birds, in the 

 second volume of the Water Birds, page 183, was not at all 

 inclined to admit the Bucephala Islandica as a good species, 

 and says that " it presents no other difierences, that are not 

 met with in undoubted specimens of Clangula chrysoph- 

 thcdma (the European representative of Bucephala Ameri- 

 cana)^ than that of having a semilunar white band before 

 the eye, in place of an ovate or oblong band and a trans- 

 verse black band on the white of the wing. In his opinion, 

 these crescent spotted individuals, as he calls them, are 3'oung 

 males in their second or third year, and he proceeds to show 

 why the various differences in the markings are but the evi- 

 dences of immaturity. 



Now at this late day it is but time wasted to argue the specific 

 difierences of these birds, it being generally conceded by Orni- 



