We have had considerable difficulty in discovering the exact range of the present species 

 ill North America, on account of the wide extent of country over which it appears to be 

 spread, but from whicli no ornithologist has sent records. This is especially the case 

 with the northern I'ange of the bird, so that a considerable portion of the nesting-habitat 

 of the species as given in the accompanying map, is purely problematical. We have 

 submitted our map of the distribution of the bird to Dr. Elliott Coues and Mr. J. A. 

 Allen, and the eastern and western limits of the breeding-range are given in exactly 

 similar lines by both those distinguished ornithologists. The central limit is fixed by 

 Mr. Allen somewhat more to the southward than by Dr. Coues, and the reason is 

 stated in a letter which the former gentleman has kindly sent us: — " In the States east 

 of the Mississippi River it breeds south nearly to the Ohio Eivcr, at least sparingly; 

 and thence further westward through the greater part of the States of Missouri and 

 Kansas, and southward from Eastern Kansas across the Indian Territory and Eastern 

 Texas to the Lower E.io Grande, and thence again westward near the Mexican Boundary- 

 line to Southern California. It has been observed in the breeding-season at St. Louis, 

 Mo., and at Galveston and Corpus Christi in Texas, and is doubtless more or less common 

 where there is suffi.cient timber to furnish nestinsf-sites westward throughout the interior 

 to the Pacific Coast. I have marked a line on the maji to indicate what I believe 

 may be safely taken as its approximate southern breeding-limit. It is, of course, 

 not pi-esent over large areas of the treeless plains of the interior, except as a rare 

 micjrant." 



Commencing with the range of the AVhite-bellied Swallow in the far north, we find 

 the following note of Mr. L. M. Turner's: — 



" On several occasions I observed this Swallow flitting about the buildings at 

 St. Michael's, Alaska, during the month of August and early in September. The lateness 

 of the season led me to conclude that they were birds having reai'cd their young in the 

 interior portions of the country, and were now on their way to the southward, preferring, 

 through some freak of fancy, to return by the coast rather than the interior. At the 

 trading-station on the Nushagack River I saw a great many, certainly a dozen pairs, 

 of these birds, swiftly scouring the edges of the I'iver-banks and upper dry lauds to feed 

 on the myriads of insects which are to be found there. TJiis bird was not observed in 

 any other portion of the country." 



Mr. Nelson writes : — " Although having even a wider nortliern range than the Barn- 

 Swallow, this bird does not accept the shelter afforded by man, but retains its ancient 

 habit of occupying holes in banks or trees, and, as a consequence, its distribution along 

 the Arctic coast and shores of Bering Sea is limited to those portions where the proper 

 positions for its nesting-sites are afforded. At the Yukon delta, the 1st of June, 1879, 

 and at St. Michael's, on the 24th and 25th of May, 1880, they were common, and 

 although they nest at the former place, where the river-banks and dead tree-trunks 

 afford them proper sites, yet in the latter place they are unknown, except as visitants in 

 fall or during the spring migration, when, as on the dates mentioned, they were found 



