GREATER FRIGATE BIRD. 
From the Mascarene group a subspecies can be recognised with a very 
small biU, the longest female bill being 80 mm., the longest wing 542 mm. 
I name this subspecies 
FrEGATA ARIEL IREDALEI, Subsp. U. 
selecting Alddbra as the type locality. 
A form has also been noticed in the Atlantic Ocean, but no series are 
vet available. 
%/ 
In the preceding digest not much detail is given, but such details 
will all be found in my Birds of Australia, the part covering these birds 
being now in the press.” 
Though I emphasized in the last sentence that this was only a digest 
and not much detail was given, my friend, the Hon. W. Rothschild, has 
furnished a criticism in the Novitates Zoologicce, Vol. XXII., pp. 145-146, 
February 12, 1915, which I here reprint. 
“ Vol. XXII., February 12, 1915, pp. 145-146. On the genus Fregata, 
“ In the Austral Avian Record, Vol. II., No. 6, Mr. Mathews gives a 
synopsis of the genus Fregata. 
There are several points in this synopsis which need revision. As 
Mr. Mathews has stated in the Catalogue of Birds, only two species of the 
genus are recognised under the names of F. aquila and F. ariel. It is 
therefore of great importance to science that Mr. Mathews, by his careful 
study of the group, was enabled to show that there are a number of 
other species and several subspecies that have been overlooked. I regret 
much, however, that Mr. Mathews has fallen into a fundamental error in 
regard to the species which must bear the name minor Gmel. As he quite 
correctly states, the type of this name is the bird figured on plate 309 of 
Edwards’ Gleanings ; but he has failed to assign this plate correctly, for 
by only taking note of the fact that Edwards’ bird was of unknown 
origin, he arbitrarily fixed the type locality as Jamaica. If he had studied 
the plate and read the description carefully he could not have failed to 
see that in Edwards’ bird the throat and foreneck are white, while in all 
the West Indian birds it is blackish. There is considerable internal 
evidence in the text, besides the fact of the white throat, which proves 
the bird received by Edwards to have come from the eastern half of the 
Indian Ocean, so I must fix as the typical Fregata minor of Gmelin the 
birds of that area. 
“ A second error of Mr. Mathews is his placing the larger species found 
on the Galapagos Islands as a subspecies of F. minor under the name of 
F. minor ‘ magnificens.'' This bird does not differ from the West Indian 
275 
