Allen on the Ornithological Fauna of North America. 85 



ON RECENT ADDITIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGICAL 

 FAUNA OF NORTH AMERICA.* 



BY J. A. ALLEN. 



The additions to the list of species and varieties of North Ameri- 

 can birds made within the last few years have been so numerous, 

 and their places of record are, moreover, so widely scattered, that I 

 have found it desirable to prepare for my own convenience a list of 

 such additions, together with reference to their places of record and 

 localities of capture. Believing that such a list would prove useful 

 to others, it is here presented. These additions may be divided 

 into three classes : -^ (1) Southern species recently detected near 

 our southern boundary, due mainly to recent explorations by 

 (a) Mr. H. W. Henshaw in Arizona, and (6) Dr. J. C. Merrill and Mr. 

 George B. Sennett in the valley of the Lower Rio Grande in Texas ; 

 (2) Asiatic or Old World species detected in Alaska and the Arctic 

 regions by Mr. H. M. Turner and others ; (3) recently distin- 

 guished varieties. These additions number 28 species and 10 varie- 

 ties, all added siuce 1874. 



RETROSPECTIVE. 



In the present connection it seems desirable to compare briefly 

 and in a general way the present status of North American orni- 

 thology with its condition when Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence's great 

 work on North American Birds was published, in 1858. In this 

 work 738 species were described, but of these 22 were explicitly 

 stated to be extra-limital (tom. cit., p. Ivi), leaving 716 as found 

 north of the present northern boundary of Mexico.f On collat- 

 ing the Land Birds described in this work, numbering 478 species 



* By North America is here meant only that portion of the North Ameri- 

 can continent north of Mexico. 



t It should be stated that reference is here made to the " List of Species" 

 given in Baird's " Report " of 1858 (Introduction, pp. xv-lvi), and not to the 

 same author's "Catalogue of North American Birds," published in 1859, com- 

 monly known as the " Smithsonian Check-List." In the latter are formally 

 included one or two species and several varieties not given in the foiTner, 

 although they are nearly all mentioned provisionally or informally in the text 

 of the '* Report." 



