368 TJte American Naturalist. IMay, 



to the number, while Chen cserulescens is considered to belong 

 to our avifauna, and has therefore been added to the list of 

 1895. The Swallow-tailed Gull, given as Oreagrus furcatus in 

 1886, is now Xemafurcata, and nine examples of it are said to 

 be known to science, instead of only three, as reported in 1886. 

 Numenius arquatus and Chordeiles v. sennetti are also added to 

 the hypothetical list of 1895, while Buteo fuliginosus is ignored 

 entirely. 



Coming at last to the " List of Fossil Birds of North America," 

 we find that as compared with the existing species, a greater 

 number has been added to those previously known than there 

 has been to the list of living birds. In 1886 there were 46 

 species of fossil birds reported, while in 1895 there were 64 

 upon the record. No doubt there are others that should have 

 been added to these, overlooked by the Committee, as, for ex- 

 ample, the rail-like bird called Orecoides osbornii Shufeldt, from 

 the Upper Cenozoic of the staked plains of Texas. Marsli in- 

 creased the list of Cretaceous Birds by the addition of three 

 species, and the Tertiary Birds by one species, while Shufeldt 

 added no less than fourteen new species of fossil birds as be- 

 longing to this latter geological horizon. 



To this list should also have been added those belonging to 

 the " Recent Era," as, for example, Plautus impennis — the Great 

 Auk — and Camptolaimus labradorius — the Pied Duck. Of the 

 first named species there is an abundance of subfossil material 

 in existence, and of the latter there are doubtless bones to be 

 found in the dried skins of specimens in museums and else- 

 where. Both birds are quite as extinct as is the famous Juras- 

 sic bird, the Archseopteryx of the Solenhofen States of Bavaria. 



But the addition of new birds to the avifauna of any coun- 

 try is by no means all there is to ornithology. Nor does the 

 science see its end when these new forms have been described, 

 figured and printed in an official list. The importance of giv- 

 ing a new bird a name, recording its superficial characters, and 

 defining its geographical distribution is not to be underrated, 

 the more especially so as all this greatly helps those who are 

 engaged with the science of their morphology, their taxonomy, 

 and their present affinities and past origin. One of the chief 



