1896
that such a faunal study as I have mentioned, embracing any extended area, has ever been made.
In a recent article in 'The Auk' (Vol. XII, 'The Summer Range of Colorado Birds') Prof. Cooke ignores any such element as this in the study of Colorado birds, and for this reason he may describe anything but a natural state of affairs. For instance, the present status of the Western Meadovvlark, Mourning Dove, Say's Phœbe, and Bullock's Oriole, in the Cache la Poudre Valley, must of a necessity be very different from what it was forty years ago, when nothing existed there to modify the natural distribution of the species. Thus it is entirely possible that Prof. Cooke's statement that " there is a greater variety of birds among the foothills, but not so many individuals as on the plains," may represent only an artificial condition. To describe the range of an animal like the buffalo, which occurred in immense numbers over a large part of the United States, as "very rare, occurring in small herds of some half a dozen individuals each, in remote fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains," would be but illy describing the life and distribution of the hordes of the plains.
At some few localities investigations have been carried on to determine the primitive and natural distribution of birds in our desert regions. But these regions are not now being irrigated and probably never will be. Studies should be prosecuted now in those regions liable to irrigation. It is from these as a basis that exact comparisons can be drawn in future years, and exact values given of effects produced by such tremendous surface changes as those occasioned by irrigation and the settlement of the arid region.
THE PINE GROSBEAK IN CAPTIVITY.
BY O. W. KNIGHT.
The winter of 1892–93 will be long remembered by Maine ornithologists on account of the great number of Pine Grosbeaks (Pinicola enucleator) which visited this State. November 16, 1892,
