General Notes. 
191 
a male Bar us Philadelphia , shot on the Neosho River at this place on April 
18, 1879. This is the first notice of* its appearance in the State, but, as 
Dr. Coues, in “ Birds of the Northwest,” says: “ No one of our species is 
more widely dispersed than this. Go where we may in North America, the 
pretty bird may be seen at one or another season, if we are not too far 
from any considerable body of water,” I am led to believe its occurrence 
not exceptional, and that it has heretofore been taken for L. franJdini, a 
bird which it somewhat resembles in both color and markings, and being 
of nearly the same size it would readily be taken for it by the casual ob- 
server. — N. S. Goss, Neosho Falls, Kan. 
The Booby Gannet (Sula fiber) in Massachusetts. — In my Cata- 
logue of the Birds of New England, I felt constrained to put the Booby Gan- 
net in the purgatory of the “not proven.” It had been mentioned by Mr. 
Putnam, but all traces of evidence to authorize its retention had been lost. 
It had also been given in Mr. Linsley’s list, but erroneously. It is not a 
species whose appearance could be looked for with any confidence, but 
then the list of Massachusetts birds abounds in the appearance of quite a 
number of such unlooked for visitors. On the 17th of September, 1878, a 
fine male specimen of the Sula fiber was shot on Cape Cod, and brought 
to the Boston market. It is now in the possession of* my neighbors, 
Edward O. and Outram Bangs. — T. M. Brewer, Boston, Mass. 
A Word in Defence. — To the Publishers of the Nuttall Bulletin: — 
Inasmuch as the pages of the Bulletin have given to a correspondent 
full liberty to make against the undersigned a personal accusation which 
he was utterly unconscious of having deserved, he trusts he may at least 
be permitted to make a brief defence.’ If any impartial reader of the 
Bulletin imagines that the undersigned deserves the double charge of 
untruthfulness and aggressiveness, made against him on p. 75, Vol. IV, 
all he asks is that, in simple justice to the party thus accused, said 
reader will not take the accuser’s word for it all, but will examine into 
the matter, and judge for himself after a full examination of all the facts. 
Let this impartial reader first turn to a paper published in the Essex In- 
stitute Proceedings, 1868, purporting to be a “ Catalogue of the Birds of 
North America contained in the Museum of the Essex Institute,” with 
which is incorporated “ A List of the Birds of New England,” etc., and 
let him open at page 3. He will there find the following unmistakable 
clue to what the writer himself considers a New England bird : “In the 
following list the New England species are given in Italics, and those con- 
tained in the Museum of the Institute are followed by the numbers and 
localities of the specimens in the collection. All other North American 
species represented in the Museum are printed in Roman.'” 
Let the impartial reader proceed to carefully examine this catalogue, 
beginning with Cathartes aura, on page 5, and thence to page 64. He 
will find some three hundred and thirty-two birds, more or less, each given 
