The Eastern Distribution of the Prairie Horned Lark: A Question 
of Evidence. In view of the data we possess to-day such a question 
would seem irrelevant, were it not a fact that recent works of importance 
reiterate the old dogma that this bird of the western prairies is rapidly 
pushing its way eastward. 
It is true' that our knowledge of its distribution has been worked out 
from West to East in a “back-handed fashion,” as has been well shown 
by various data, and by several tabulations, part of which have aimed to 
prove the foregoing assumption. 
First named in 1884 by Mr. H. W. Henshaw from a type selected from 
Illinois specimens, it has been rather slowly identified until we now have 
a fair knowledge of its distribution. 
It is especially noticeable that as soon as attention was called to it, it 
appeared in various quarters where it had been confounded with its larger 
eastern relative, Otocoris alpestris, and had actually been collected on the ' 
Massachusetts coast a year before it was distinguished as a well marked 
race. Yet its history began much earlier. In 1833 Audubon discovered 
it at Bras d Or, Labrador, and about a year later figured it in the ‘ Birds 
of America,’ II, pi. CC, fl., and in the second volume of the ‘Ornithological 
Biography’ (1834), page 575, he described it as the nuptial plumage oFthe 
Common Horned Lark. 
Another early record of it is to be found in Maynard’s ‘Naturalist’s 
Guide,’ where in 1870 it was published as having been seen in July, 1869, 
in Eastern Massachusetts. This record is re-cited in Coues, ‘Birds of the 
Northwest’ (p. 38, 1874). 
The working out of its distribution in Maine (where it is the first migrant 
to appear in spring, and one of the first birds to breed), is certainly the 
result, in no small measure, of anticipation and careful search, and in no 
less measure, to opportunity, and it seems very probable that the same 
is true of the greater part of its somewhat recently discovered rahge. In 
addition to the foregoing evidence, the rediscovery of the bird in Labra- 
dor in 1891 by the Bowdoin College expedition (Proc. Portland Soc. 
Nat Hist II p. 153), after a lapse of fifty-eight years, shows conclu- 
sively that it has not suddenly extended its range east wardly.— Arthur 
H. Norton, Mus. Nat. Hist.. Portland , Me. 
Auk, X2D.il, Apr. , 1903, p. z-zL. 
