Scott on the Migration of Birds. 
97 
ornithologists of my acquaintance measure either the tail or the 
tarsus from precisely the same relative points. We are not told 
that ML. defilippiana was actually compared with ML. mollis and 
if extraneous data were alone made use of there is surely room for 
a doubt in this connection. Again in respect to the bills there is 
nothing to show whether the chord or the arc was measured. If 
the latter (they simply say “ rostr. a fronted the apparent dis- 
crepancy would be pretty satisfactorily explained. 
In summing up the matter, it is perhaps enough to say that 
MLstrelata gularis finds its nearest known affine in ML. defilip- 
piana. To go further than this would be hazardous under the 
present conditions of the case, but the relationship of the two 
birds is so extremely close that larger suites of specimens may 
confidently be expected to bridge over the slight differences which 
now separate them. In such an event defilippiana , Giglioli and 
Salvadori, 1869, will of course give place to gularis, Peale, 1848. 
In concluding, I quote in full all that Peale has handed down 
to us relating to the life history of the species which he had the 
honor to discover and describe. It is, so far as I know, the only 
account that has ever been written. 
“ This bird was found amidst icebergs, buffeting the storms 
and fogs of the Antartic regions. We saw but few of them, and 
obtained but a single specimen, on the 21st of March, while the 
Ship Peacock was enveloped in a fog, latitude 68° S., longitude 
95 ° W. of Greenwich. Their flight was easy and not very rapid. 
They were silent, and alighted on the water to examine some 
slips of paper and chips purposely thrown from the boat.” * 
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE MIGRATION 
OF BIRDS. 
BY W. E. D. SCOTT. 
While showing some friends the astronomical observatory and 
accessories connected with the College of New Jersey at Prince- 
ton, on the night of October 19, 1880, after looking at a number 
of objects through the nine-and-one-half inch equatorial, we were 
* U. S. Expl. Exp., Zoology, p. 410. (Edition of 1858). 
