eal General Notes. 321 
and Putnam’s ‘Birds of Essex Co.’) exclude A. caudacutus altogether! 
Even Dr. Coues (Proc. Essex Inst., V, 1868, 282), by a lapsus corrected 
in ‘New England Bird Life,’ I, 251, recorded the Sharp-tails of Rye 
Beach, N.H., as Seaside Sparrows, and J. Matthew Jones (‘Forest and 
Stream,’ XII, 1879, 106) in his list of the birds of Nova Scotia included 
the Seaside Sparrow as an abundant summer resident of that Province, 
arriving there during the latter part of March! From what is now known 
concerning the breeding range of A. maritimus, we are warranted in 
suspecting that Brewer (Hist. N. A. Birds, I, 1874, 560), too, fell into a 
similar error in saying that a few pairs of Seaside Sparrows, “identified 
by Mr. Audubon,” bred in the marshes of Stony Brook, near Boston, in 
1836 and 1837. 
However that may be, the eastern limit of the breeding range of the 
Seaside Sparrow, so far as now observed, is the western shore of Nar- 
ragansett Bay, beyond which it occurs only asa very rare straggler. The 
first unquestionable Massachusetts specimen was killed at Nahant in 
August, 1877, by Geo. O. Welch, and recorded by Brewer (Bull. Nuttall 
Orn. Club, III, 1878, 48; Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., XIX, 1878, 260). 
This specimen (now in the collection of the Boston Society of Natural 
History, No. 221) isa young male with a sharply streaked breast; it was 
identified by Baird as a Seaside Sparrow “in the plumage regarded by 
Audubon as a distinct species, and called by him MacGillivray’s Finch.” 
Another Massachusetts specimen, an adult female shot by Dr. L. B. 
Bishop on Monomoy Island, Cape Cod, April 14, 1890, was recorded by 
J. C. Cahoon in ‘The Auk,’ VII, 1890, 289. — WaLTER Faxon, Museum 
of Comparative Zoblogy, Cambridge, Mass. 
What is Fringilla macgillivraii Aud. ?— In 1835 Audubon (Orn. Biog., 
II, 1835, 285) described under the name Frinzgrlla macgillivrati a dark- 
colored Seaside Finch, discovered by Bachman in the salt marshes of 
South Carolina. Figures of this bird, drawn at Charleston by Audubon’s 
son, were announced as finished, but the plate did not reach London in 
time to be engraved and published till two years later (Birds of America, 
Vol. IV, 1837, Pl. CCCLV). In a subsequent volume of the ‘ Ornitho- 
logical Biography’ (IV, 1838, 394) Audubon extended the range of 
MacGillivray’s Finch so as to include similar birds found on the coast 
of Louisiana and Texas. 
In 1888 Mr. Allen (Auk, V, 1888, 284) described under the name 
Ammodramus maritimus pentnsule a small, dark race of the Seaside 
Sparrow from Tarpon Springs and Cedar Keys, on the western coast of 
Florida, at the same time identifying with this form a series of specimens 
from Grand Isle, La. In the following number of ‘The Auk’ (p. 426) 
Mr. Allen pronounced a bird from the coast of Georgia to be A. m, 
peninsule, and in the second edition of the A. O. U. Check-List the 
distribution of this subspecies on the Atlantic coast embraces South 
Carolina, the type locality of Pringilla macgillivratz. 
41 
