U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
BIOLOGICAL SURVEY 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
_January 8_, is 97 . 
Mr. William Brewster, 
i , 
Cambridge, Mass. 
Dear Brewster: 
I intended to write you yesterday but was prevented by pressure 
of other matters. 
The unfortunate galley 6, which has so long delayed the publica¬ 
tion of the 'Auk*, finally turned up yesterday when Coues sent it to 
Ridgwav. 
In the matter of Clangula versus HareIda ; Ridgway and I had act¬ 
ed on the alleged facts in the only way our code permits one to act 
under the circumstances, but since you felt that our action was wrong 
I thought the only thing to do was to see the original publication. 
With this object in view I went to General Greely's house and he 
showed me his copy of the 1819 edition of Ross's Voyage, On page 154 
of Appendix IV of the 2nd volume the following headline occurs: 
"Genus CLANGULA, Gesner(Garrot)". 
This headline is followed by the statement: "Species, Clangula 
glacialis(Northern Garrot). One only of this species was shot in lat¬ 
itude 7Sf N. The vulgar name is Long-tailed Duck". 
As soon as I saw the above headline I abandoned my position at 
t. 1 
once, inasmuch as the mention of the bird Garrot,in connection with 
