ART. XXVI.-NOTES ON THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE REGION 

 ABOUT THE SOURCE OF THE RED RIVER OF TEXAS, FROM 

 OBSERVATIONS MADE DURING THE EXPLORATION CONDUCTED 

 BY LIEUT. E. H. RUFFNER, CORPS OF ENGINEERS, U. S. A. 



By C. a. H. McCauley, 



Lieutenant Third United States Artillery. 



Annotated by Dr. Elliott Coues, U. S. A. 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 



Reading, Pa., Jtdy 29, 1876. 



Sir : I have the honor to transmit herewith a copy of a report orig- 

 inally rendered to Lieut. E. H. Riiffuer, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., 

 Chief Engineer of the Department of the Missouri, and also intended for 

 publication in the Proceedings of an Eastern academy of science. Its 

 appearance having been unavoidably delayed, the artiele is now offered 

 for publication by the Survey with which you are connected, or for such 

 other use as you may see fit to make of it ; and I shall esteem it as a 

 favor if you will assume the editorship of the paper. 



In transmitting the following Notes upon the Ornithology of the region 

 where were found the true sources of the Red River of Texas, and of the 

 country traversed en route, it may be well to add a few prefatory remarks. 

 Being on sick-leave in Southern New Mexico in March, 1876, and having 

 made an application to the War Department for duty with the expedi- 

 tion, with the hope of improving my health, and having already joined 

 the expedition when the application was disapproved, I continued as a 

 volunteer. Though my duties mainly related to the survey proper, an 

 effort was made, after each day's work and march had ended, to obtain 

 and prepare as many specimens as possible, in order to gain some idea 

 of the avi-fauna of the country. With very limited time, subsequently 

 restricted by recurrence of sickness, my collection was necessarily 

 meagre. This is the more to be regretted, since, as far as recollection 

 serves me, a portion of the region surveyed had never before been visited 

 in the interests of ornithology. [*] 



[* Marcy's well-known report on the Red River, covering the ground only in part* 

 contains no ornithological matter among the several zoological papers which it 

 compriaes. — Ed.] 



