I have met with it in flocks during the summer of the Southern Hemisphere, and these birds, as well as those obtained at Chupat in November by Durnford, were undoubtedly visitors from the north; but invariably small flocks of half a dozen to thirty birds begin to appear on the pampas in April, and remain there, as Durnford says, until September, when the northern migrants are nearly due. These individuals must therefore breed near the extremity, or beyond the extremity, of South America. It is very curious, to say the least of it, that the Arctic and Antarctic regions of America should possess the same species, and that, at opposite seasons of the year, it should winter in the same district, so far from the breeding-place of one set of individuals, and so near to that of the other! Captain Abbott observed the Hudsonian Godwit in the Falkland Islands in flocks in the month of May (see Ibis, 1861, p. 156). These could not have been Alaskan birds, but were no doubt southern breeders on their way north, for that they could winter so far south seems incredible. 409. NUMENIUS BOREALIS (Forst.). (ESQUIMO WHIMBREL.) +Numenius borealis+, _Scl. et Salv. Nomencl._ p. 146; _Durnford, Ibis_, 1878, p. 404 (Centr. Patagonia); _Barrows, Auk_, 1884, p. 316 (Entrerios); _Seebohm, Plovers_, p. 333; _Baird, Brew., et Ridgw. Water-B. N. A._ i. p. 318. _Description._--Above dark brown, each feather edged or spotted with pale buff or dirty white, becoming most strongly marked on the rump and upper tail-coverts; wings uniform dusky brownish, narrowly edged with white; tail buffy brown, transversely barred with dusky: beneath, throat white; rest of under surface pale buff, with more or less V-shaped dusky markings on the breast, flanks, and under tail-coverts; axillaries and under wing-coverts pale chestnut, transversely barred with dusky: whole length 11·6 inches, wing 8·14, tail 3·3. _Female_ similar. _Hab._ Arctic America, extending south to Patagonia in winter. The Esquimo Whimbrel, which, as Mr. Seebohm tells us, may be distinguished from all its congeners by having scarcely any traces of bars on its primaries and by the back of the tarsus being covered with hexagonal reticulations, migrates from the tundras of North America, where it breeds, to the southern extremity of South America. Mr. Barrows noted its first arrival at Concepcion in Entrerios on September 9th, 1880, "in large flocks." After the middle of October none were seen there. The same excellent observer saw it almost daily on the pampas between Azul and Bahia Blanca, "in company with the Golden Plover and Bartram's Sandpiper, until late in February." From the 8th to the 10th of October, 1877, Durnford saw large flocks of this Whimbrel in the Chupat Valley flying south, and obtained two specimens. Capt. Packe and Capt. Abbott both procured examples in the Falkland Islands. Order XVI. GAVIÆ. Fam. L. LARIDÆ, or GULLS.