General Notes. 189 



BUCEPHALA ISLANDICA AND BUCEPHALA CLANGULA. — Eeceiltl}' my 



attention was drawn, by Mr. Welch, to the peculiar shape of the feathers 

 which form the white scapular band in the male Barrow's Golden-eye. In 

 this species the scapular feathers are white along the shaft, and black on ore 

 or both edges, usually both. In the second species these feathers are also 

 white along the shaft, and black-edged, but in the Barrow's Golden-eye the 

 terminal part of the white breaks off, and leaves the black edges pi'ojecting 

 beyond ; so that the end of the feather is of much the same shape that a 

 longitudinal section of the lower half of a champagne bottle would be. 

 This breakage does not take place in the common Golden-eye. 



In view of the general similai-ity of these two birds, such a simple char- 

 acter of the male Barrow's Golden-eye is not without interest That the 

 light-colored barbs of a feather break more easily than the dark barbs is 

 well shown in the worn plumagps of our Golden Woodj^eckers and in the 

 'genus Totanus. But the shedding that takes place in the Golden-eyes is 

 not of this class, but belongs to the same class as that which takes place 

 in the red nuchal patch of some Woodpeckers. In the case of the 

 Golden-eyes the color of the back is considerably darkened. 



This peculiarity has held good for all the specimens examined by me, 

 some seven or eight in number. — J. A. Jeffkies, Boston, Mass. 



The King Eider (Somaieria speclab'dis) on the Californian 

 Coast. — As there is no record of the occurrence of this species on the 

 Pacific Coast from any point south of Alaska, the capture of a specimen 

 last winter off Blackjjoint, San Francisco, is a matter of interest. The 

 specimen came into possession of my friend, Mr. D. S. Bryant, who says 

 that it is the first instance of the presence of the species in this latitude that 

 has come to his knowledge. The unusually severe winter on this coast 

 explains, he thinks, the unusual event. I believe that this and several 

 other species of Water birds with similar Northern ranges are to be looked 

 for as more or less regular visitants to the Californian coast, concerning 

 the ornithology of which much remains to be added before our information 

 is as full as it is of most portions of the Eastern coast. — H. W. Hen- 

 siiAW, Washington, D. C. 



Capture of the Glaucous Gull {Larus glaucus) on Long Island, 

 N. Y. — I procured a specimen of this handsome Arctic species in Fulton 

 Market, New York, on March 4, 1880. It h:ul been brought in on that 

 day from Long Island, where it was shot. It is an excellent example of 

 the condition described by Richardson as L. hutcJdnsi, and which Mr. 

 Geo. N. Lawrence has previously recorded from Long Island (Ann. Lye. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII, p. 299). Hutchins's Gull is considered by IVlr. 

 Howard Saunders (see his review of the Larince, in Proceedings of the 

 Zoijlogical Society of London, 1878) to be that very brief stage through 

 which L. glaucus passes in changing from the innnature to the adult 

 plumage. This state is so uncommon that I append a description of my 



