NOVITATES ZOOLOOICAE XXV. 1918. 



TYPES OF BIRDS IN THE TRING MUSEUM. 



By Ernst Habtert, Ph.D. 



A. TYPES IN TEE BSEHm COLLECTIOH'. 



IN NoviTATES Zoor.OGiCAE, viii. 1901, Mr. Klein.schmidt and I began to make 

 a list of the Brehm Collection, but we did not continue our work beyond 

 the forms of Comis corax, as other pressing work kept us otherwise occupied, 

 and our far-distant homes made mutual discussions almost impossible. Our 

 article was prefaced by an Introduction written by myself. In it occurs a 

 mistake, which must be rectified. On page 39 I said that the Great Auk which 

 once formed part of the Brehm Collection was long ago exchanged for some 

 rare old " Dresden " cups. This story has been current for some time, and was 

 told me by Mr. Kleinschmidt, who had good reason to beUeve it : but it is 

 entirely unfounded. The Great Auk in the Brehm Collection was sold in 1867, 

 through the kind offices of Dr. Otto Finsch, to the King of Italy, who kept it 

 in his private collection in the " Veneria Reale." Later on it passed from there 

 into the Rome Museum where it is now preserved. Before leaving Germany 

 it was restuffed by the late taxidermist Schwerdtfeger in Bremen. 



The fixing of the types in the Brehm Collection has not been easj'. In 

 Brehm' s times it was not usual to select types when new species were described, 

 and very few ornithologists marked them as such on the labels. Only in a few 

 cases Brehm put on the labels " Urexemplar." In the more elaborate articles 

 in the Isis and Naiimannia, however, he frequently quoted the dates when he 

 obtained his new bii-ds ; but comparatively seldom was it possible to make out 

 the types of the numerous new names given in the Handbuch der Naturgeschichte 

 aller Vogel Deuischlands (1831), and in the notoriously cursory Vogeljang (1855). 

 Only a careful comparison of the descriptions with the specimens in the collec- 

 tion could in some cases decide whether a specimen could be regarded as " type " 

 or not. This has been done, and I trust that the following list will be of 

 interest and value to all students of palaearctic ornithology. I recommend to all 

 readers to read my " Introduction " on pages 38, 39 of Novitates Zoologicae, 

 vui. (1901). I believe that C. L. Brehm would have been the most celebrated 

 ornithologist of the nineteenth century, if he had been placed in one of the great 

 museums of Europe, with literature at Ms disposal and with opportunity of 

 frequent intercourse with brother ornithologists. As it was he Uved far from 

 any scientific centre in a lonely village, and had little but his own ideas to 

 follow and a very meagre Ubrary. He undoubtedly was ahead of his contem- 

 poraries, and he appears to have been the first who systematically distinguished 

 more than the so-called " good species." In his books Brehm did not use 

 trinomials. In 1856, at the meeting of the German ( rnithological Society in 

 Cothen, however, he declared that he had apparently done wrong in giving 

 binomial names to his subspecies, but that he was willing to use a clearer method ; 

 the old species-name should remain to be that of the species, but the sub- 

 species should, as proposed by Schlegel, have a third name added, and in this 



