Io8 General Notes. [January 



Qiiebec, I was shown by the Curator, Mr. C. E. Dionne, the skin of an 

 Albatross which, upon examination, proved to be of this species. Mr. 

 Dionne assured me that he obtained the skin in September, 1885, from a 

 fisherman who said he had captured the bird a few days previously in the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence. The skin had been preserved in salt, and when it 

 reached the Museum was soft and quite fresh. This is the first record of 

 the occurrence of this species in the Atlantic, its usual habitat being the 

 Indian and South Pacific Oceans.— Montague Chamberlain, St. John, 

 N. B. 



Cory's Shearwater at Newport, R. I.— In the Auk for January, 1S87, an 

 account was given by Prof. Baird of the occurrence of great numbers of 

 Jaegers and Cory's Shearwaters, found feeding upon the young herring, 

 which, towards the end of September, i885, abounded from Point Judith 

 to Vinevard Sound. On the 30th of the same month, I received from 

 J. Glynn, Jr., of Newport, a Shearwater which appeared to me to be 

 Pufflnns borealis, and Mr. Cory has since kindly confirmed the identifica- 

 tion. This furnishes some evidence to show that the flight of these birds 

 extended as fiir west as the mouth of Narragansett Bay. — William C. 

 Rives, Jr., M. D., Newport, R. I. 



The Black Duck in Chihuahua. — In April, 1879, I was with Col. A. K. 

 Morrow, than Major in the 9th Cavalry, and a small detachment of cav- 

 alry and Indian scouts scouting in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. 

 While in camp at the Laguna Palomas, an alkali lake fed by warm 

 springs, just inside the Mexican line, I observed, among numerous other 

 ducks of different varieties, a flock of six or eight birds that I thought 

 were Black Ducks. After tiying in vain to get a shot with my shot- 

 gun, Colonel Morrow succeeded in killing one with a cavalry carbine. 

 As I suspected, it turned out to be a true Black Duck; a variety I had 

 been familiar with since my boyhood on Long Island Sound. The 

 Laguna Palomas is in about longitude 107° 30' W. and about three miles 

 south of the line between New and Old Mexico. — R. T. Emmet, Ft. Nio- 

 brara, Nebraska. ^ 



[The species here referred to is probably Auas fulvigiila, which, so far 

 as now known, is the form of Dusky Duck occurring in Texas and 

 adjoining parts of Mexico. — Ed.] 



Rallus longirostris crepitans breeding on the Coast of Louisiana. — Mr. 



Ridgway, in his 'Manual of North American Birds,' gives the habitat of 

 this species as the "salt water marshes of Atlantic coast, north regularly 

 to Long Island, casually to Massachusetts." 



It gives me pleasure to be able to extend its range to the Gulf coast. 

 While at Grand Isle, which borders the Gulf of Mexico at the entrance of 

 Barataria Bay, Louisiana, in June, 1886, I secured an old bird and two 

 young, which, when compared with specimens of R. I. saturatics in the 

 National Museum, proved not to be that variety, but the true Eastern 

 bird, varictv crepitans.^h.. K. Fisher, M. D., Washington, D.C. 



