aaa General Notes. 2 25 
five feet distant from my chair, and I noted at once that he looked like a 
wild bird, his ruffled plumage being in prefect condition, unfrayed and 
unstained. In amoment he caught sight of me and flew away. 
A heavy snow-storm set in the next day. It was followed within the 
week by another. Wintry weather prevailed generally up to January 29. 
On that day I was told by a neighbor —Edward Woodman, Esq. — that 
he believed a Mockingbird had been visiting his grounds for several days. 
There, on January 31, I saw the bird again. He was rather shy and quite 
silent, and soon flew away. 
I published a notice of this interesting winter visitor in-the Portland 
‘Daily Press’ of February 2, hoping, if he were an escaped cage bird, 
that the fact would thus be brought out. Nothing, however, was elicted. 
Enquiries of local bird fanciers also failed to lead to the knowledge of 
any lost pet bird. 
I now met with the wanderer nearly every day. About three o’clock of 
the afternoon of February 11, the sun shining warmly in a still, crisp air, 
he took up a position in the top of a tall elm before the same window from 
which I first saw him, and sang loudly for a few moments when he was 
apparently frightened away by passers-by. On February 15,1 saw him 
for the last time, feeding on the berries of a mountain-ash. Four days 
later, — just one month from his first appearance, — Mrs. Charles J. Chap- 
man, a neighbor and an entirely competent witness, reported to me that 
he had that morning visited her grounds in search of mountain-ash 
berries. 
I have been able to find but one previous record of a supposed wild 
Mockingbird in Maine,—a very indefinite note by Mr. G. A. Boardman 
in the ‘American Naturalist, Vol. V, April, 1871, p. 121. It is this note, 
apparently, to which reference is made in ‘New England Bird Life,’ 
Vol. I, p. 62. — NATHAN CLIFFORD Brown, Portland, Me. 
Turdus lawrencii Coues. —In 1878, George N. Lawrence described a 
new Thrush from the upper Amazon, as Turdus brunneus,' evidently 
unaware that the same name had been previously applied by Brewer, in 
1852, to the North American species now known as Turdus fuscescens. A 
year later, Dr. Coues published the third instalment of his Ornithological 
Bibliography, in which he inserted the title of Lawrence’s paper with the 
following comment: ‘‘N.B. There is more than one Zurdus brunneus 
of earlier authors. The present belongs to the section of the genus 
including 7. lewcomelas, albiventris, &c. If a proper Turdus, stet Turdus 
lawrencit, nobis, hoc loco, species renovata. Turdus lawrencit seems 
to have been overlooked by subsequent writers, and is not mentioned 
even in Seebohm’s Monograph of the Turdide (Brit. Mus. Cat. Birds, V, 
»2 
‘Ibis, 4th Ser., II, Jan., 1878, p. 57, pl. i. 
2 Bull. U. S. Geol. & Geog. Surv. Territories, V, No. 4, Sept. 30, 1879, p. 
570. 
29 
