142 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Augustin or of Macatina, which are not far the oue frora the other. I 

 cannot tell you how was the weather, but I can tell you that the storms are 

 pretty rare in Labrador, above all in November. But the bad weather, I 

 mean the tempests produced by the wind, are liard and violent in these 

 countries, in autumn are frequent, and this bird, fight [tossed] by the waves, 

 will have found the death on the rocks, and will have been drawn by the 

 currents, which are terrible in these places, far from countries in which he 

 ordinarily lives. I could not know [ascertain] if he had some wounds ; 

 they only told me that he was very lieau. It was a male, but the skin badly 

 prepared was in a bad state. I never had his egg. You know that he 

 nestle in Greenland in the crevices of rocks. He probably lay his eggs in 

 June." On receipt of these letters, I wrote to M. Fairmaire, of Paris, 

 whom I liappen to know personally, and asked him to be good enough to 

 give me the history of the specimen referred to from the date of its reaching 

 his hands. His reply was as follows :—" St. Maude (Seine), 25 Fevricr, 

 1884. Je regrette beaucoupd'avoir a vous dire que je ne sais rien du tout 

 relativement a un Alca iiiipenuts capture en 1870 par M. Lechevallier qui 

 a uia connaissance n'a jamais capture ce rare volatile [doubtless a slip of the 

 pen for volaille.] L'information du Dr. Elliott Coues repose done sur une 

 complete erreur, et des informations inexactes." Should this meet the eye 

 of M. Lechevallier perhaps he will be good enough to explain, for the satis- 

 faction of ornithologists, the discrepancy which apjiears to exist between the 

 statements in his own letters and in that of M. Fairmaire above quoted. — 

 J. E. Hartino. 



' The Auk : a Quarterly Journal of Ornithology.'— We cannot dis- 

 miss the name 'Auk' from our minds without recalling the fact that, under 

 this title, the members of the American Ornithologists' Union have elected 

 to carry on tlie journal which has hitherto been known as the ' Bulletin of 

 the Nuttall Ornithological Club.' The first number with this new name 

 appeared in January last, and, the editors having well-nigh exacted a 

 promise from critics (p 105) that no jokes should be made at their expense 

 in regard to the awkwardness of the name, we will do no more tlian offer 

 our hearty congratulations on the satisfactory establishment of the above- 

 named American Union, and wish continued success to the old journal 

 under the new regime. In regard to the contents of the current number, 

 we may especially direct the attention of our readers to the pages on Recent 

 Ornithological Literature, and to the editorial remarks (pp. 102— 104) on 

 Trinomial Nomenclature. 



Ornithology of Riding Mill on Tyne.— To my article under this 

 heading (p. 92), originally intended for a local Society, I ought to have 

 prefixed some account of the neighbourhood to which the notes refer. 

 Riding Mill is in South Northumberland, fifteen miles west of Newcastle- 



