142 Mr. P. R. Lowe on the 



his yacht the ' Valhalla/ and Mr. M. J, Nicoll, who accom- 

 panied hira, made a collection of birds which he described in 

 ^ The Ibis ' of the same year. Among these birds were 

 specimens of two new species, which Mr. Nicoll described 

 as Pitangus caymanensis and Dendroica crawfordi. 



An examination of the list of birds given below reveals 

 the fact that the avifauna of the Cayman Islands, as at 

 present known to us, comprises some 75 species. This small 

 total is almost certainly due to two reasons — first, that the 

 collectors who have visited the islands since 1886 have 

 naturally confined their work chiefly to the land-birds; 

 secondly, that there appear to have been no local naturalists 

 sufficiently interested to make records of the migratory 

 and casual birds which visit the islands. Of the 75 species 

 already recorded, about 40 would appear to be resident ; the 

 remainder being made up of winter visitors, of birds which 

 pass through on migration in the autumn or spring, and of 

 casual stragglers. 



Of the 40 resident birds, 20 are peculiar to one or other 

 of the Caymans, or to all three, and do not occur elsewhere. 

 But with regard to this division we are bound to state that 

 in the case of one or two, or even more, we have experienced 

 the greatest difficulty in appreciating the distinctions on 

 which they have been considered to rank as new species or 

 subspecies. The remaining 20 resident birds comprise those 

 which have a more or less wide range outside the islands. 

 Of these Dendroeca vitellina is found nowhere else but in Swan 

 Island, wliile in the case of Aniazona leucocephala, Myiarchus 

 sagrce, and Holoquiscalus gundlachi, the only other known 

 locality in which they are found is Cuba. 



The Ground-Dove, again, is only found elsew^here in 

 Jamaica. 



The following is a list of those species and subspecies 

 which have been considered to be absolutely peculiar to the 

 Cayman Islands : — 



