1S90.] Miller, Cape Cod Notes. 227 



abrupt. The soil is almost entirely sandy, supporting a scant 

 vegetation among which such species as Ammop/iila arundi- 

 ?tacea, Aitdropogon virgiuicus, Arctostephalos ziva-ursi, 

 Corcnia conradii and Hudsonia erecoides are noticeable. The 

 only abundant trees are the scrub oaks and pines. The former 

 seldom attain a greater height than ten feet ; while the pines 

 are but little taller, excepting where, as in some deep 'sink hole' 

 or valley, they are sheltered from the force of the wind. Here 

 they sometimes grow to a height of nearly thirty feet. These 

 pines for the most part have been planted within the past twenty 

 years, and seem to have about completed their growth, as most of 

 the larger ones already show signs of decay. The 'sink holes' 

 form a characteristic feature of the place. They occur in great 

 abundance, varying from slight depressions in the ground to 

 deep, irregularly circular basins several acres in extent and 

 probably seventy-five to one hundred feet deep. At the bottom of 

 them there is apt to be a richer soil than that of the surrounding 

 country, and it is also very common to find a pool of water. 



Most of the captures here recorded were made near the little 

 group of farmhouses known as the 'High Land' settlement, 

 which stands about half a mile back from the ocean, and almost 

 due west of Highland Light. 



Xema sabinii. — I secured ;i fine adult female of this species in fresh au- 

 tumnal plumage on August 21, 1SS9. The bird was shot from a fishing 

 boat about three miles west of North Truro, in Cape Cod Bay. When 

 first seen it was feeding among a flock of Larus and Stercorarins upon 

 the dog-fish livers which had been thrown overboard to attract the sea- 

 birds. 



The only other Massachusetts records of this species are, so far as I am 

 aware, a young bird taken in Boston Harbor on September 27, 1874 (see 

 "Brewster, Am. Sportsman, V, 1S75, 370," Allen, Bull. N. O. C, III, 

 187S, 195, which see also for other New England records) and another speci- 

 men killed on "Cape Cod" during 1888 (Ornithologist and Odlogist, 

 XIV, June, 1SS9, p. 95). 



Ereunetes occidentalis. — Although I searched carefully for this species 

 during the autumn of 18SS and summer of 18S9, I failed to detect it until 

 September 2, 1889, when I obtained a fine adult male from a gunner who 

 had killed the bird on the beach, about two miles north of Highland 

 Light, on the ocean side of the Cape. This is the only specimen that I 

 have met with on Cape Cod, and the species must be rare, or at least ir- 

 regular, at North Truro, as I have examined large numbers of Ereunetes 

 in search of the western bird. 



