HISTORY OF THE WAXWING IN AMERICA 465 



as only a variety of the Bohemian Wax wing, though Catesby, 

 Brisson, and others knew better. The Bohemian appears to 

 have been first discovered in America " in the spring of 1826, 

 near the sources of the Athabasca, or Elk River, by Mr. Drum- 

 mond", as we are informed by Sir John Richardson, who says 

 that he saw it himself the same season at Great Bear Lake, in 

 latitude 65. The Athabasca specimens were transmitted to 

 England, and communicated by Mr. Leadbeater to the Prince 

 of Musignano, who in 1828 described and figured the species 

 upon this material in his "American Ornithology". Richard- 

 son's account, in the "Fauna Boreali-Americana ", did not 

 appear until 1829, and doubtless the first well-founded publica- 

 tion of the species as an American bird was in the Appendix 

 of Bonaparte's " Synopsis '>, in the second volume of the Annals 

 of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, page 438, where 

 the species is numbered 65 Ms. In this place, Bonaparte simply 

 notes, "Inhabits near the Rocky Mountains"; but in his "Arner 

 ican Ornithology " he gives the long and interesting account 

 of the bird from which I have already extracted some items 

 bearing on its general history. Referring to the Athabasca 

 specimen described, he states that it was a female, taken on 

 the 20th of March, 1825, while Richardson gives the date as 

 1826. The last-named states that the bird appears in flocks at 

 Great Bear Lake about the 24th of May, when the spring thaw 

 exposes the berries on which it feeds; that it remains but a 

 few days; that its breeding-place was unknown to him, but 

 believed to be in the rugged and secluded mountain-limestone 

 districts in the 67th and 68th parallels, where the common 

 juniper, on the fruit of which it feeds, abounds. He adds a 

 note of his observation of a large flock on the Saskatchewan 

 early in May, 1827, when several hundred individuals alighted 

 with loud twittering on one or two trees of a poplar grove, and 

 stayed about an hour. 



Such is the substance of our original advices, which, how- 

 ever, did not long remain unique. Townsend did not observe 

 the bird on the Columbia, and Nnttall's account was merely a 

 note derived from Richardson ; but Audubon, in 1838, gave 

 some additional particulars. This author states that the south- 

 ernmost locality where he has known the bird to be procured is 

 the vicinity of Philadelphia, where, as well as on Long Island, 

 several were shot in 1831 and 1832, and that a pair were seen 

 and pursued, but without success, by his sons near Boston in 

 30 B c 



