164 Brewster, Barrow's Golden-eye in Massachusetts. [ April 



Nahant this winter on authority of Tufts." No statement so brief 

 could well be more satisfactorily attested; for A. M. Tufts, the 

 Lynn taxidermist who died ten or a dozen years ago, was a per- 

 fectly reliable man and too familiar with both kinds of Golden-eyes 

 to make any mistake with regard to a male of either species. Nor 

 would there seem to be reason to question the Plymouth record, 

 since Mr. Job puts faith in it. 



There is still another Massachusetts record, 1 relating to Nan- 

 tucket, where a male Barrow T 's Golden-eye "in the adult plumage" 

 is said to have been taken on December 17, 1906. As this specimen 

 was "destroyed in ignorance," before being seen by any one except 

 a few native gunners, its subsequent identification on hearsay evi- 

 dence, merely, cannot be regarded with much confidence. 



The Museum of Comparative Zoology has just received by gift, 

 from Mr. Matthew Luce of Boston, a fully adult male of Barrow's 

 Golden-eye mounted by the M. Abbott Frazar Company. Con- 

 cerning this bird Mr. Luce writes me, under date of December 22, 

 1908, as follows: "I shot the Barrow's Golden-eye on Friday 

 morning, the 11th of December [1908] in the marsh known as 

 Nauset Bay at Eastham, Mass. There were two others with this 

 bird, a female which I secured, and another male, but whether 

 the other male was a Barrow's or not, I could not tell. The 

 female, I took to be a common Whistler. There was a light 

 southwest wind with an occasional flurry of snow. I had decoys 

 out and got a number of the ordinary Whistlers besides this Bar- 

 row's." 



I feel peculiarly indebted to Mr. Luce for his kindness in thus 

 enabling me to couple with the admission of errors committed in 

 my youth respecting Barrow's Golden-eyes, this definite and ob- 

 viously authentic record of the recent occurrence of the species in 

 Massachusetts. 



1 Auk, XXV, No. 2, April, 1908, p. 217. 



