316 BREWSTER'S WARBLER. 



the stand was written in the autograph of John Cassin, "J. C, 20 October, 

 1862", and also a badly blurred legend "Not [note?] from Bell." An appeal to 

 J. G. Bell elicited the response that he remembered shooting a peculiar Warbler 

 in Rockland Co., N. Y., about the year 1832, — a Warbler something like a 

 Golden-wing, but lacking, although in high plumage, the black throat of that 

 species; a great many years afterward, he sold this specimen in Philadelphia 

 but knew nothing of its ultimate fate. Dr. Trotter justly inferred that the Phila- 

 delphia Academy specimen was in all probability the very bird shot by Bell. 



Now as Audubon was intimately associated with Bell, is it not possible that 

 he had examined this example of Brewster's Warbler? In that case, seeing that 

 this bird's characters were in part those of the Blue-wing, in part those of the 

 Golden-wing, he may have inferred the interbreeding of these two birds, and so 

 (rather unwarrantably, it is true) their identity. If this be not the ex- 

 planation of the passage in Audubon's letter to Bachman I have no other to 

 suggest. 



When Audubon came to publish his account of the Golden-winged Warbler 

 in 1839 (Ornithological Biography, 1839, 5, p. 154) he said not a word about 

 its connection with the Blue-winged Warbler. 



