478 General Notes. [June, 
form black below as well as above. While premising that this 
bird may be the Buteo fuliginosus of Sclater, it should be re- 
marked that in “ History of North American Birds” (Vol. 111, p: 
266), I referred to B. swainsonit on the presumption that it was 
probably based on a small example of the latter species in the 
dark phase of plumage; but I may have been wrong in this 
determination. 
The specimen in question was shot at Oyster bay, Florida, 
Jan. 28, 1881, by W. S. Cransford, and was secured for the 
National Museum from W. H. Collins, of Detroit, Mich.—odert 
Ridgway in Forest and Stream. 
CURIOUS INSTANCE IN THE BreEpING Hasits OF THE BLUE- 
BIRD.—In April, 1879, while on a collecting tour near Prince 
Frederictown, Maryland, I found a nest of the blue-bird (Sza- 
fia sialis) in a hollow post. The eggs, five in number, were re- 
markably small, and in the body of the nest were three other 
specimens, abnormal in shape and very large. As this is the only 
instance of the kind I have ever heard of, it may not be amiss to 
record it. Either the original owners had been driven away by a 
new pair, who having rebuilt the nest, laid their own eggs ; or the 
first three were deserted. The latter explanation is sustained by 
the small size of the five found in the upper part. Curiously 
enough both sets were perfectly fresh.—A. J. Reynolds, German- 
town, Pa, 
actually predominate over the real food in quantity. Besides 4 
young nematoid worm and a gregarine, there are three 
infusoria, a vibrio, and a minute filamentous alga, which was 
viously known to inhabit the digestive canal of certain myriapods 
and a beetle (Passalus cornutus ). In the thirteenth number of 
Vol. vit of the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zool- 
ogy, Mr. Walter Faxon describes and figures certain deformities 
in the lobster, most of which appear to originate from injure’ 
received after molting, before the new skin becomes hardened i 
the deposition of salts of lime. Mr, Faxon, after reviewing al 
the deformities which have been described among Arthropods, 
divides them into five categories: (a) of deficiency in nutrition, 
() of excess, (c) of transformation, (d) of arrested development, 
and (¢) of hermaphroditism. In an article on the mode 
A. eg 2 
or 
pr c 
