BKEAVSTER : BIRDS OF THE CAPE REGION, LOWER CALIFORNIA. 213 



based is altogether too indefinite to be determinable. If bis bird was really a 

 Hylocicbla at all — which is doubtful — it is most likely to have been the 

 Gray-cheeked Thrush. The name guttata of Pallas, on the other hand, rests on 

 a careful description, which, although taken from a young bird, unmistakably 

 relates to the Alaska Hermit Thrush. 



Mr. W. H. Osgood has lately separated ^ this bird into two forms, a gray 

 one, for which he retains the name aonalaschkae, and of which he has examined 

 summer specimens from Nushagak, Kukak Bay, and Kadiak Island, Alaska, 

 and a browner, more richly colored bird which breeds on the "islands and 

 coasts of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska " and which he proposes to 

 call verecunda. Still a third form — slevini — said to be the grayest of them 

 all and to inhabit in summer the " cloudy coast belt of California, from south- 

 ern Monterey County northward, locally at least, to Sonoma County " has been 

 since named and described by Mr. Grinnell.^ I have a large series of Dwarf 

 Thrushes from California, Oregon, and British Columbia, but few, if any, of 

 them can be safely assumed to have been taken on their breeding grounds. 

 Nevertheless, they apparently represent all three of the forms just mentioned. 



With slevini it is unnecessary to deal in this connection, for it is not known 

 to have occurred in the Cape Region. Aonalaschkae — or guttata, as I prefer 

 to call it — and verecunda seem to me sufficiently unlike to be recognized as 

 distinct subspecies, provided they really occupy different breeding grounds; 

 but verecunda, as Mr. Osgood evidently suspected might prove to be the case, 

 is nothing more nor less than the nanus of Audubon. I am aware, of course, 

 that several ornithologists have argued ' — and with some plausibility because 

 of the lack of definite evidence to the contrary — that this name was based 

 primarily on an exceptionally small specimen of the Hermit Thrush of eastern 

 North America and not on the skin which Audubon mentions having received 

 from the Columbia River. Probably no one of these writers was aware that 

 this skin is still in existence — in the collection of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology. It bears three labels. On the original one is inscribed in Auduhon's 

 own handwriting, " Turdus terrestris. Aud. Columbia River," to which is added, 

 in Mr. John Cassin's hand and in red ink, " J. J. Audubon's label." The 

 second label is evidently Mr. Cassin's, and reads, " John Cassin — Philadelphia 

 — 1864. Turdus najius, Audubon, Dr. J. K. Townsend's collection Mr. 

 John G. Bell,* Columbia River." The third label is that of the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology, which acquired the specimen many years ago by 

 exchange with Brown University. 



1 Auk, XVIII. 1901, 183-185. 



2 Ibid., 258-260. 



3 Cf. Brewer, Proc. Best. Soc. Nat. Hist. XVII. 1875, 438, footnote; Coues, 

 Birds Cob Valley, 1878, 22-25 ; Osgood, Loc cit. 



* Mr. Bell could not well have had anything to do with the capture of this 

 Bpecimen, but Mr. Cassin may have obtained it from him. When I first made liis 

 acquaintance, some thirty years ago, he still had several of Audubon's skins in his 

 possession. 



