228 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-I3TH ANNUAL REPORT

be relatively more numerous in species in a state or similar area than in a whole continent.
 If only nesting birds were counted the results would be somewhat different. For only about 33% of our water birds, as cornpared with 56% of our land birds, are known to breed in the area treated; the remainder, except for a few transient or doubtful species, being found here only in winter. So that among the nesting species the land birds outnumber the water birds about two to one.
 A few birds of special interest deserve a passing mention. The largest one, the wild turkey, is still found in solitudes far from the homes of mankind, like the bear and deer.
 The Florida burrowing owl (Spcotyto Floridana, first described in 1874) differs from most other birds in living in holes in the ground. It is said to be rather frequent in the Kissimmee River prairies of Osceola, Polk, Okeechobee and DeSoto Counties, and has been found also along the Caloosahatchee River and in Manatee County. The same or a very closely related form has been found in the Bahamas, and it has a near relative in Haiti and another in the western burrowing owl which is a well-known inhabitant of "prairie dog towns" in the Great Plains. Its habits have been described in a few papers referred to in Chapman's Handbook of Birds (p. 317).*
 The Carolina paroquet or "parrakeet" (Comiropsis Carolinensis), a very showy bird that formerly ranged over a large part of the coastal plain from Virginia to Florida, is now making its last stand a little south of our limits, if it is not already extinct. Its handsome plumage caused many specimens to be caught and caged, and at the same time made it an easy mark for gunners, and .there has also been some prejudice against it on account of its supposed fruit-eating propensities.
 The Florida jay (Aphelocona cyanea, a different genus from the common jaybird of the eastern United States and its Florida subspecies), apparently first observed by William Bartram about 1775, and first described scientifically in 1817, is said to be chiefly confined, now as formerly, to the coasts of Florida between lat*See also J. K. Small, Natural History 20:491, 496. "Sept.-Oct." (Dee) 1920.