ABSTRACT 



OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



LINN^EAN SOCIETY 



nsris-vsr ttozflik: 



FOR THE YEAR ENDING MARCH 7, 1890. 



A large proportion of the papers read before the Society have been published 

 in full in ' The Auk,' ' Forest and Stream ', and the * Bulletin of the American 

 Museum of Natural History '. Consequently only the titles, with reference to 

 the place of publication, are given in the abstract which now follows, showing in 

 outline the work of the Society during the year ending with the meeting of March 

 7, 1890. 



March 15, 1889. — The President in the chair. Twelve persons present. 



Mr. L. S. Foster presented a paper ' On the Breeding Habits of the Swifts of 

 the World. ' Many authorities were cited, and the twenty known species were 

 treated at length. 



Mr. Geo. B. Sennett stated that a nest with four eggs of the Great Horned Owl 

 [Bubo virginianus) had been found by one of his collectors at Corpus Christi, 

 Texas, Feb. 22, 1889. Its site was unusual,-— a hole, in the low bluff of a river 

 bank, such as the Barn Owl {Strix pratincold) regularly selects in Texas, — and, 

 stranger still, it contained three live rattlesnakes. He had also received a set of 

 eggs of the Bald Eagle (Haliieetecs leucocephalus), taken Nov. 6, 1888, — "a case 

 of beginning to lay the year before." 



Dr. Robert T. Morris mentioned that the chrysalids of the Cecropia moth (also 

 of the Prometheus moth) were unusually abundant this year in the vicinity of New 

 York City, nearly every deciduous tree being covered with them. Those on 

 Long Island that he had examined had been destroyed by the ichneumon, which 



