iS.*^.fl Stkjnegkk, Ai/d/cr/ii ()r)ii///i>lti^i((i. 2 7 "Z 



A more detailed account of the Slate-backed Gull will be given 

 in my report on the birds collected by me on the Commander 

 Islands and in Kamtschatka. 



IX. PrioccIIa tetiuirostris (AuD.) not a Bird of iiiuuxo 

 Sea or the Arctic Ocean. 



I feel compelled to correct another mistake in E. W. Nelson's 

 'Birds of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean.' At No. i66 he 

 gives "/'r/(?re//« tcnuirostris (And.) Ridgvv., Slender-billed Ful- 

 mar" as occurring in these seas, and says : "There is but a single 

 record of this bird's capture on the coast of Alaska. This was at 

 Kotzebue Sound, whence Mr. Dall secured a single skin during 

 his explorations in the Territory." Under the head of the fore- 

 going species, Pulniar^is glacialis I'odgersi^ he passes the follow- 

 ing remark : "As we approached the harbor of Ounalaska on 

 September 23, iSSi, hundreds of these birds were seen in the 

 ordinary light-colored plumage, which were in company with 

 about an equal number of birds either of the same species or a 

 closel}^ related one of exactly the same size. . . . Mr. Ridgway 

 suggests that the dark-colored birds seen at that time were the 

 slender-billed Fulmar." 



The bird which Mr. Dall procured was Puffinus temiirostris 

 Temm., and was correctly identified by Professor Baird, as every- 

 body may be convinced by looking at the plate given (Trans. 

 Chicago Acad. Sci., I, 1869, pi. xxxiv, fig. 2, pp. 322, 303). 

 But this bird belongs to a totally different group, the Puflfinece, 

 and is not the same as Audubon's Procellaria tcnuirostris of 

 of the group Fulmareas. The claim of the latter species for recog- 

 nition as belonging to the North American Fauna rests solely 

 upon Audubon's type, said to have been collected by Mr. Town- 

 send oft" the mouth of the Columbia River and now preserved in 

 the National Museum. As the name Procellaria tcnuirostris is 

 preoccupied b_y Temminck in 1828 for the Puffinus, Audubon's 

 bird should '&\a\\(\a% Fuhiiarus glacialoides {^X)l\\\\\) oy Priocella 

 glacial aides. * 



* The reviewer of Nelson's memoir, in 'The Auk,' 1884, p. 80, correctly quotes this 

 synonym, but seems not to have been aware of the fact, that Ball's bird was something 

 totally different. The error is repeated in Coues's 'Key,' 2d Ed., p. 779. 



