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SOME NEOTROPICAL BIRDS. 227 
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Perhaps the Carrion Vultures originally crossed over 
from Florida to Cuba, and from thence to Jamaica, but 
Haiti being the more Windward Island they were unable 
to fly against the heavy trade winds. 
From Jamaica and Haiti up to the Virgin Islands the 
Old Witch, Crotophaga ani, is a commonly occurring 
species, but it is absent from Antigua, St. Kitts and 
Anguilla, and so far as I am able to ascertain is not met 
with again until Trinidad and the neighbouring Islands 
are reached. In British Guiana it is joined by a second 
species, C. major, which is not found in Venezuela, while 
a third form, C. sulctrostris appears to be confined to 
Central America. 
The Old Witch is a very weak flyer and it is easy to 
imagine how the line of migration in the Antilles may 
have become interrupted. 
Between the Virgin group of Islands and Anguilla 
there is a comparatively wide and unobstruéted sea, 
which would prove an impassable barrier to a bird of 
feeble flight ; but on the other hand that portion of the 
Caribbean lying between the Virgin Islands and Haiti is 
dotted with islets, so that the Old Witch may easily 
have passed from one to the other at a time when they 
were larger and closer together, or perhaps united. 
The original home of the Old Witch and Carrion Vul- 
tures was most probably the South American Continent, 
from whence they migrated to the West Indies, but it is 
evident that the migration of the former species must 
have taken place when the configuration of the Islands 
was very different from what it is now, and at a period 
much anterior to the migration of the Vulture, or the 
species would be co-existent, 
GG 
