10 PROCEEDINGS OP THE 



88) of the same year, from his next contributions on that topic. 

 We find, however, under items 437 and 438 in Fitzpatrick's 

 Bibliography of Rafinesque that he published in the Kentucky 

 "Gazette," Vol. I, Lexington, 1822, an article "On the Birds 

 of Kentucky — a new Swallow," '^ Hiritndo albifrons,'' the Blue 

 Bank-Swallow. Also he published in the succeeding number 

 of that paper an article ' ' On the Wandering Sea-Birds of the 

 Western States." So far I have been unable to consult these 

 references.^ 



Not until 1832 can we discover that Rafinesque again ven- 

 tured into the field then so actively occupied by Audubon, 

 Bonaparte, Townsend and Nuttall. In that year he put forth 

 his Philadelphia * ' Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge, ' ' 

 no doubt in the vain hope that it would outshine or at least 

 rival the straight-laced and ultra-Linnaean journals of Silliman 

 and the Philadelphia Academy, to whose well-censored pages 

 his later productions were anathema. 



In part 2 of the Atlantic Journal, on pages 57 to 59, he makes 

 a double-column comparison of the number of native birds of 

 America which have been domesticated by the aborigines, as 

 compared with those of the Old World. Among the former he 

 lists the ''American hen " (Guan ?), four ducks, several pigeons, 

 an ostrich (Rhea), the Flamingo (quoting ancient Spanish 

 records) fourteen species of parrots, etc. His evident intent 

 was to disprove the English prejudice that aboriginal America 

 had no domestic birds worth mentioning except the Turkey. 

 On page 63 of the same magazine is a full description of an 

 eagle brought from Buenos Ayres, S. A., then captive in the 

 garden of a Mr. Macarran of Phila. It probably was a Bald 

 Eagle with peculiarly colored toes and a band of brown stain 

 across the ends of its tail feathers due to its five years confine- 

 ment in a cage. Rafinesque named it Aquila dicronyx from the 



^ Through the kindness of Mr. Putnam, Librarian of Congress, a copy of 

 these articles has been forwarded. They prove of much interest and value 

 and considerably increase our estimation of the author as an ornithologist. 

 Being loo lengthy for this paper, they will be published in the second issue of 

 the Auk for 1912. In these he describes a new gull and new tern, as well as 

 a new genus of terns. 



