^"'ggf^] General Notes. 27 1 



Nesting Instincts of Swallows. — As supplementing^ Mr. Brewster's 

 record of the premature exhibition of the nest-buikiing and procreative 

 instincts of Swallows (see Auk, XV, April, 1898, p. 194), I may add some 

 observations made on Tree Swallows {Tac/iyci/iela birolor), at Leonia, 

 N. J., during August and September, 1897. The extensive salt marshes 

 in which myriads of these birds roost in July, August, and September, are 

 here crossed by a road over which I passed almost daily and rarely with- 

 out seeing in the road, one or more flocks of Tree Swallows, varying in 

 size from eight or ten to several hundred birds. Without exception, as 

 far as I observed, and I studied them very closely at short range, these 

 birds were in the immature plumage of birds of the j-ear. By far the 

 larger number seemed to have no special object in alighting in the road, 

 they did not move about as though searching for food, indeed for the 

 most part were practically motionless, but occasionally a pair would 

 copulate, as described by Mr. Brewster, and more often a bird would pick 

 up a bit of dried grass and fly up into the air with it, or sometimes it was 

 carried fifty yards or more and dropped from the air; at others the bird 

 would carry it to the telegraph wires bordering the road and drop it after 

 perching a moment. 



Additional evidence of inherited knowledge was apparently given by 

 many Tree Swallows which were often seen hovering about a pile driven 

 in a creek which traversed these meadoAvs. I at first supposed these birds 

 to be feeding on insects which presumably had alighted on the pile, but 

 the number of birds, often a dozen or more were seen about the pile, and 

 the persistency with which they remained there, forced me to conclude 

 that in a wholly unreasoning way they were looking for a nesting site. — 

 Frank M. Chapman, American Museum of Natural History, Nexv ,Tork 

 City. 



Notes on Generic Names of Certain Swallows. — In the raid on nomen- 

 clature made a few years ago Dr. L. Stejneger seems to have been 

 peculiarly unfortunate. I have not yet trailed him anywhere without 

 finding that either he did not go far enough in the right direction, or 

 else he went in the wrong direction. The A. O. U. is to be commiserated 

 in unwittingly adopting sundry changes Dr. Stejneger proposed and 

 sought to impose on nomenclature. For example, he undertook to upset 

 the established names Hirundo and Cotile hy substituting Chelidon for 

 the former, and Clivicola for the latter, after Forster, 1817. It appears 

 from Sharpe's introduction to the Monogi-aph of HirundinidcE, p. xxxv, 

 that Hirundo Linn, was characterized by Schceffer, Elem. Orn. 1774, with 

 H. rusti^a as tj'pe. If Dr. Sharpe's method of determining the type of 

 a genus be not at variance with A. O. U. canons, this operation of 

 Schteffer's throws out Forster's later attempt to transpose Hirundo and 

 Chelidon, and we may happily revert to the status quo ante bellum. 

 Again, Dr. Sharpe, p. xliv, shows that Riparia Forster, 1S17, has that 

 sort of priority over Clivicola Forster, 1817, which results from previous 



