The Horn-billed Puffin 



in June breeding upon the Farallon Islands. It is significant, however, that Heer- 

 mann did not find the Cassin Auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus), which now breeds upon 

 the Farallons by thousands, but he expressly says of the latter, "They abound on these 

 islands during the winter, but on my return in spring they had already left to pass their 

 summer in more northern climes"!] 



Authorities. — Cassin (Cerorhina monocerata), in Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv., 

 vol. ix., 1858, p. 905 ("California"); Henshaw, Auk, vol. ii., 1885, p. 387 (Santa Bar- 

 bara and San Diego, winter; as to molting parts of bill); Grinnell, Bull. Cooper Orn. 

 Club, vol. i., 1899, p. 18 (Catalina Id.; habits, food); Howell, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 

 12, 1917, p. 19 (s. Calif, ids.; occurrence, etc.). 



WE SHALL never be done, I suppose, quarreling with the bird 

 names which an uncritical — or over-imaginative — generation has left us. 

 Cerorhinca monocerata has been known in ornithological literature as the 

 "Rhinoceros Auklet." The bird, however, is not an "auklet" at all, but a 

 puffin (as its egg clearly shows) ; while the name "Rhinoceros" based upon 

 the possession of a deciduous horny knob on the beak is, to say the least, 

 a rather broad joke. The name Horned Puffin would have been more 

 appropriate, but some other chap with a superheated imagination got 

 ahead of us by tacking that name upon Fratercula corniculata, because, 

 forsooth, it has a fleshy protuberance upon the upper eyelid ! We shall 

 have to fall back then upon the exactly descriptive designation "Horn- 

 billed Puffin," and so have the terrors of nominal similarity, rather than 



Taken on Santa Cruz Island Photo by the Author 



A WILY SPORTSMAN 



THE BIRD IS IN WINTER PLUMAGE: NOTE ABSENCE OF HORN AT THIS SEASON 



1519 



