Allen on the Ornithological Fauna of North America. 85 
ON RECENT ADDITIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGICAL 
FAUNA OF NORTH AMERICA * 
BY J. A. ALLEN. 
The additions to the list of species and varieties of North Ameri- 
can birds made within the last few years have been so numerous, 
and their places of record are, moreover, so widely scattered, that I 
have found it desirable to prepare for my own convenience a list of 
such additions, together with reference to their places of record and 
localities of capture. Believing that such a list would prove useful 
to others, it is here presented. These additions may be divided 
into three classes: — (1) Southern species recently detected near 
our southern boundary, due mainly to recent explorations by 
(a) Mr. H. W. Henshaw in Arizona, and (b) Dr. J. C. Merrill and Mr. 
George B. Sennett in the valley of the Lower Rio Grande in Texas ; 
(2) Asiatic or Old World species detected in Alaska and the Arctic 
regions by Mr. H. M. Turner and others; (3) recently distin- 
guished varieties. These additions number 28 species and 10 varie- 
ties, all added since 1874. 
RETROSPECTIVE. 
In the present connection it seems desirable to compare briefly 
and in a general way the present status of North American orni- 
thology with its condition when Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence’s great 
work on North American Birds was published, in 1858. In this 
work 738 species were described, but of these 22 were explicitly 
stated to be extra-limital (tom. cit., p. lvi), leaving 716 as found 
north of the present northern boundary of Mexico. f On collat- 
ing the Land Birds described in this work, numbering 478 species 
* By North America is here meant only that portion of the North Ameri- 
can continent north of Mexico. 
t It should he stated that reference is here made to the “List of Species” 
given in Baird’s “ Report” of 1858 (Introduction, pp. xv-lvi), and not to the 
same author’s “Catalogue of North American Birds,” published in 1859, com- 
monly known as the “Smithsonian Check-List.” In the latter are formally 
included one or two species and several varieties not given in the former, 
although they are nearly all mentioned provisionally or informally in the text 
of the “ Report.” 
