60 BREWSTER'S WARBLER. 



of all kinds, even of the most remote relationship, will evince this sympathy with 

 their neighbors in affliction. As an instance to the point : one day in this very 

 place Dr. Tyler caught a young fledgling Veery in his hat: in an instant the 

 cries of the young bird gathered around us every feathered inhabitant of the 

 swamp. 



On two occasions the male Brewster's Warbler, in the absence of the male 

 Golden-wing, was seen to engage in what seemed to us a vicious pursuit of the 

 female, only to meet with a repulse. 



When highly excited by the intrusion of a squirrel or any other marauder, 

 both sexes of the Helminthophilae,^ but more especially the female, emit a series 

 of peculiar scolding burry notes which suggest the song of the Short-billed 

 Marsh Wren. 



By the fourteenth of June the scanty clothing of the nestlings in the shape 

 of scattered patches of gray down was reinforced by the incipient feathers of 

 the so-called Arst or juvenile plumage. These (on the back) were of an obscure 

 olive-gray, but on the wings the future transverse bars of the median and greater 

 wing-coverts were apparent as yellowish pin feathers. The throats were still 

 bare, the skin thereof being of a reddish-brown hue. On the following day (June 

 15) the feathers of the throat were just visible, of an olive- or yellowish-gray color. 



On the morning of the seventeenth of June the young were all out of the 

 nest, clinging to the low shrubs and Cinnamon Ferns near the nest, a foot or two 

 above the ground. They are now olive-colored on the crown, olivaceous gray 

 on the back; the wings are marked by two transverse widely separated yellowish 

 bars; the under parts are ash-colored tinged with yellow; there are no throat 

 or cheek patches, or clear traces of a trans-ocular streak; the tail feathers, 

 just beginning to sprout, are olive-gray, or olive-slate, like the primary quills 

 of the wings. In appearance and habit they were grotesque little fellows, 



1 Mr. Oberholser (Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Quarterly Issue, May 13, 1905, 48, p. 66) holds that the 

 name Vermivora must supplant Helminthophila Ridgway (1SS2). The genus Vermivora was established 

 by Swainson in an essay published in the Zoological Journal, April-July, 1827, 3, p. 170. The genus 

 was there diagnosed and its type species, Sylvia vermivora, explicitly designated as well as implied by 

 tautonomy. In a later-written paper (Philos. Mag., June, 1827, 1, p. 434), dealing exclusively with a 

 collection of birds discovered in Mexico by the Bullocks, Swainson assigned Sylvia solitaria Wils. ( = S. 

 pinus Linn.), which he thought to be congeneric with S. vermivora, to the genus Vermivora, referring 

 back to his earlier paper in the Zoological Journal for the foundation of the genus. In the later-written 

 paper S. pinus appears as the only species in the genus Vermivora merely because it was the only species 

 of the group represented in the Bullock collection. 



Swainson's second paper seems to have been published by chance before the first paper, and there- 

 fore Mr. Oberholser maintains that S. pinus must be taken as the type of the genus Vermivora. Thus 

 is plain fact perverted and the careful work of an ornithologist defeated in order to save the countenance 

 of an absurd priority rule-of-thumb. If the genus Vermivora be accepted with Mr. Oberholser's coimota- 

 tion, it surely cannot be ascribed to Swainson, but rather to Swainson's editors! If Codes of Nomen- 

 clature make no provision for a peculiar case like this, so much the worse for the Codes. 



