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Show 278 202. Podilgmbus podiceps, ( Linn.).- Caroliua Grebe. Present in numbers on many of the fresh- water ponds of the interior; fonnd also on the coast. The P. oorautiis was not recognized by us, though it, too, is found numerously in fall. * AIXJIDJE.- AUKS. 203. Fratercula cirrhata, ( Pallas).~- Tufted Puffin. This Puffin, though more commonly known as a resident of the far north, was ascertained by us to inhabit the islands of the Santa Barbara gronp in snmraer. It was not uncommon, and was nesting apparently in the crevices of the cliffs, from which I freqnently saw it flying back and forth. Heermann likewise fonnd it breeding iu numbers on the Farallone Islands. 204. TJrta Columbia, ( Pallas).- Western Guillemot. The Santa Barbara Islands form, too, it is probablo, about the southern limit for this species in summer; among them it is, however, numerous- breeding in the caves and hollows of the generally inaccessible cliffs. Early one morning, while out collecting, I noticed many of these birds frightened at the report of my gun, streaming out of a little ravine hemmed in by high rocky cliffs, and terminating at the upper end in a low nairow cave. The tide being at its lowest, I succeeded in gaining the entrance, and, crawling on my hands and knees for a short distance, I soon had the satisfaction of placing my hands on the eggs. Their housekeeping arrangements are of the simplest kind. No nest at all is prepared to receive the eggs; but these were deposited on the sandy floor of the cavern, and at its farther end, where it was so dark that I bad to 81rike a match to see them at all. Other pairs had availed themselves of the nooks and fissures in the face of the wall, and laid their two eggs on the bare rock. I succeeded in finding a few only of the many eggs that must have been deposited here, as 4he shelves of the rocks were, in many instances, too high to be reached. The birds submitted to the pillage without a murmur, though not without solicitude, as their anxious manner « s they swam back and forth at the entrance to the ravine, keeping, however, well out of gunshot, sufficiently evinced. The eggs are a faint greenish white, spotted mostly at the larger end with irregnlar blotch ings. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, H. W. HENSHAW. Lieut. GEO. M. WHEKLER, Corps of Engineers, in Charge. APPENDIX HI). REPORT ON THE ORTHOPTERA COLLECTED BY THE UNITED STATES GEOGRAPIIICAL SURVEYS WEST OF THE ONE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN, UNDER THE DIRECTION 01 LIEUTENANT GEORGE M. WHEELER, DURING THE SEASON OP 1875, BY SAMUEL H. • SC UDDER. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., May 29,1876. SIR : The explorations during the past season covered a region from which we have hitherto received very little material; on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains scarcely any- Orthoptera have been collected south of Colorado, while the Orthopteroua fauna of the entire Pacific coast has been but little studied. It is, then, hardly surprising that of the fifty species here enumerated, mostly forwarded to me in half a dozeu small bottles, nearly one- half should prove new to science. It would have been more satisfactory if the descriptions given here could have been generally based on a richer material, and upon specimens which had never been subjected to an alcoholic bath; for not only are most of the colors obliterated by long immersion in alcohol, but the structural features are falsified, by the unnatural promiuence given to all angulations, and the deeper hollowing to sulcations, or even to flat surfaces. The nature of the explorations, however, renders it nearly impossible, at times quite impossible, to preserve and transport objects of natural history in any other way; and the rich proportion of novel forms which the moderate collections of a single year have exposed will in part make amends for the somewhat unsatisfactory nature of the material. It should be added in this connection that all the specific descriptions which foliovr ( and also all of the generic descriptions, which cover only the species mentioned in this report, excepting Hadrotettix) have been based upon specimens more or less imperfect from their preservation in alcohol, with the exception of Steiroxgs melanopleura, Arpkta |