1^91 • I Ge7jeral Notes. 



^37 



the eustachian tubes open, medially, at the nether aspect of the base of 

 the splienoidal rostrum, just in front of the basitemporal region. This 

 common or double aperture is often underlapped by a lip of bone, while 

 the walls of the tubes themselves are usually completely ossified. Now 

 in some Accipitres these walls, anteriorly, are not completed in bone, but 

 in tlio dried skull exhibit more or less of an open tract. PandioJi is re- 

 markable in having tlie anterior openings of its eustachian tubes cittirely 

 closed, and it vill be interesting to know whether this at all modifies the 

 sense of hearing in this bird. The character is present in three different 

 skulls of adult specimens that I have examined, so it is presumably con- 

 stant, and, at the present writing, so far as I am aware it stands unique 

 among birds. 



Since writing the a!)o\e paragrapli, Mr. V. A. Lucas, of the U. S. 

 National Museum, has \er\' kindly sent me the head of a recentl}' killed 

 specimen of Pandiou, and 1 liave had tlie opportimity of dissecting it 

 while the parts were perfectly fresh. They confirm what I have written 

 above, inasmuch as the anterior aperture or ai)ertures of the eustachian 

 tubes do not open in the mitidle line of the cranium above the anterior 

 spine of tiie basitemporal. But the osseous antero-lateral wails of the 

 passages in question are patulous, at some distance, upon eitlier side, 

 from tiie median line, and \.\\q Jieslty parts of the eustachian tubes commu- 

 nicate therewith. By means of a fine bristle, I found either passage com- 

 municated, as usual, with the middle ear, and so there can be no question 

 as to the functional status of those organs in the Osprey. The external 

 auricular cavities, however, are small, and in either one I found a loose 

 plug of some size, of a substance that had the appearance of a blackish 

 wax, and tins is sometimes seen in other large birds.— R. VV. Shufeldt, 

 Takoma, D. C. 



Megascops asio macfarlanei — A Correction. — Since the appearance of 

 the advance sheets of my paper entitled -Descriptions of Seven supposed 

 new North American Birds',* I have been informed by Captain Bendire 

 that Mr. MacFarlane's name is Roderick Ross MacFarlane, not Robert 

 MacFarlane as given in my foot-note under Megascops asio macfarlanei. 

 The mistake is to be regretted but I trust it will be excused in veiw of the 

 fact that the name has been repeatedly, if not invariably, printed as R. 

 MacFarlane, Roliert MacFarlane, or Robert McFarlane. The form last 

 named appears in the latest list of corresponding members of the Ameri- 

 can Ornithologists' Union (Auk, Jan. 1891 , Supplement p. xiii). — Wil- 

 liam Brewster, Cambridge., Mass. 



Scon's Oriole {/c/erus parisor/tm) in Central New Mexico. — The first 

 of July, 1S90, while in camp near the northern end of the Sandia Moun- 

 tains, some twenty-five miles from Santa F6, New Mexico, I saw a pair of 



*Published in this number of The Auk, pp. 139-149. 



