6 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis 
were stout, well-developed birds, with the black and yellow 
markings clear and decided. Some ten or twelve years since 
[italies mine] a new race made its appearance, smaller in size, 
the colours paler and having altogether a bleached, washed-out 
look about them when compared with the others. These have 
remained permanently and increased from year to year, have 
now become our most common winter resident in the country. 
They breed very early by the roadsides and in the low commons 
everywhere, and at this season of the year are seen running in 
the road tracks or sitting in rows of fifteen to twenty along the 
fences waiting till you pass that they may return to their regu- 
lar feeding ground’’. 
The above account is of great importance for several reasons. 
First, MelIlwraith’s “stout, well-developed birds, with black and 
yellow markings clear and decided . . . that came and went 
with the Snowbirds’’ were, beyond question, Otocoris alpestris 
alpestris seen by him on their migrations to and from their north- 
ern breeding grounds. His ‘‘new race’’, ‘‘smaller’’, with ‘‘colours 
paler’’, that ‘‘remained permanently’’ was, as assuredly, what 
came to be Otocoris alpestris praticola, the Prairie Horned Lark. 
Secondly, critics of the supposed eastward movement of the 
Prairie Horned Lark (for which see further) cannot impute 
that these records are the results of a new interest and more 
careful observations which might possibly have accounted for 
many of the records made after publication of Henshaws’ 
(1884) paper on the Horned Larks. Thirdly, here is an unques- 
tioned date of the Prairie Horned Lark’s first appearance in 
Ontario, viz., “ten to twelve years” prior to 1883, that is, 1871 
to 1873. In 1894 Mellwraith, writing again of the “Birds of 
Ontario”, says of this Horned Lark: “So far as I can remember, 
this species first appeared in Ontario about 1868.” 
The first New York record of a breeding Lark was that of 
the Rev. Wm. Elgin, who, as reported by Langille (1892), 
found a nest at Buffalo April 28, 1875. Merriam (1878, p. 53) 
in his ‘“‘Remarks on Some of the Birds of Lewis County, North- 
ern New York” quotes A. J. Dayan, who, in turn, quotes Dr. 
C. P. Kirley of Lowville as follows: ‘‘I first observed Eremo- 
phila alpestris July 16, 1876, when I shot one two-thirds grown 
and saw the parents. In the same locality June 24, 1876, I 
noticed a pair of old birds, and on searching for their nest, I 
