Note on Bccephala islandica. — I) r . J. Bernard Gilpin has pub- 
lished* an interesting article, on the specific distinctions of this species 
from B. clangula. Besides the well-known outward marks of differences 
especially observable in the head, he finds important anatomical charac- 
ters in the structure of the trachea, bronchi, and lower larynx. According 
to the plate, the difference is very strongly marked. In the words of the 
text: “ In the male common golden-eye, the wind-pipe, soon after leaving 
the throat and before it enters the breast, has a very sudden enlargement, 
almost as it were a broad hoop thrown obliquely around its stem ; on the 
inside this leaves large circular pouches on the posterior surface before 
the restriction of the pipe takes place again. In the Rocky Mountain 
species, the wind-pipe simply and gradually enlarges itself, becoming re- 
stricted again before it enters the breast. In one the enlargement is 
suddenly from 2-8 of an inch to an inch and ! -8, while in the other from 
2-8 to 5-8 of an inch, and that, with no protuberances. In the males 
alone of both species there is, after the wind-pipe has entered the breast, 
that very complicated sub-quadrangular knob, from which the bifurcation 
of the pipe proceeds.” — Elliott Coues, Washington, D. C. 
* Pages 390-403, with a plate, in some periodical not named in the over- 
sheets which have reached me. Doubtless the publication of the Nova Scotia 
Institute. Bull NiQi0i 4 , April, 1870, p. /* £ ./J 
