Recent Literature. 
109 
African Finch ( Crithagra butyracea) at South Scituate,Mass., and of a speci- 
men of the European Goldfinch ( Carduelis elegans ) near Boston in 1878. 
Both of the latter, however, are stated to have been undoubtedly escaped 
cage-birds, and are not considered as additions to our fauna. About four 
pages are devoted to the history of the breeding of the Loggerhead Shrike 
(. Lanius ludovicianus ) near Bangor, Me. and Rutland, Vt., — a fuller and 
more detailed account than had previously appeared. These “ Notes ” 
form a convenient and connected record of recent discoveries in relation 
to many of the rarer New England birds, and add more or less that is new 
respecting some of them. — J. A. A. 
Kumlien’s Contributions to the Natural History of Arctic 
America.* — Nearly fifty pages of Mr. Kumlien’s “Contributions” are 
devoted to the birds observed. Of the 84 species noted, seven or eight 
relate to localities not Arctic, being species that visited the ship while off 
Newfoundland and neighboring points. Of the remainder, only about 
twenty are land birds. The notes respecting many of the species are 
quite extended, and embrace many points of interest. The Stonechat 
is given as “ one of the commonest land birds of Disko Island, Green- 
land,” where other birds are spoken of as common, and as breeding, though 
rare, along both shores of Cumberland Sound and on the west coast of 
Davis Strait. The European Ring-necked Plover (. Mgialitis hiaticula ), 
previously reported by Captain H. W. Feilden from Buchanan Strait, 
and “ long known as a common bird of the Greenland coast,” was found 
not rare on the shores of Cumberland Sound. Larus glaucescens is stated 
to be “ quite common on the upper Cumberland waters, where they breed,” 
its first record on the Atlantic coast, but one well substantiated, resting, 
as we are informed, on specimens received at the National Museum. 
The Avocet (Recur virostra americano ) is confidently entered in the 
list, on the authority of a drawing “made by a wild Eskimo”; but we 
fancy many ornithologists will require more tangible evidence before ac- 
cepting this species as a bird of Arctic America. A Crane, recorded as 
“ Grus ? (probably fraterculus ),” is said to be “quite common in some 
localities,” and to breed “ in Kingwah and Kingnite Fjords in Cumberland, 
in Exeter Sound and Home Bay on the west coast of Davis Straits,” and 
to be especially common in spring at Godhavn. If not Grus canadensis , 
previously recorded as a bird of Greenland, there seems little probability 
of its being G. fraterculus (cf. this number of the Bulletin, p. 123). The 
Purple Sandpiper ( Tringa subarquata) is given as “not uncommon in 
North Greenland. Eggs were procured at Christianshaab, Greenland, 
through the kindness of Governor Edgar Fencker. Not observed on any 
part of Cumberland that I visited.” The eggs here mentioned were re- 
* Contributions to the Natural History of Arctic America, made in Connection 
with the Howgate Polar Expedition, 1877 - 78. By Ludwig Kumlien, Naturalist 
of the Expedition. 'Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 15, 1879. Birds, pp. 69-105. 
