1885.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 93 



given a woodcut representing the head and one of the 

 secondaries. Of the locality is said : u Hab. — Of original speci- 

 men, uncertain, but somewhere in western North America." 



In Dr. Coues' "Key" (1872), for the lirst time is seriously 

 doubted the North American origin of the specimen. He says 

 (page 125): "To this species [C. ludovicianus] I must also 

 refer the G. elegans of Baird, considering that the single speci- 

 men upon which it was based represents an individual peculiarity 

 in the size of the bill. This specimen is supposed to be from 

 California, but some of Dr. Gambel's, to which the same locality 

 is assigned, were certainly procured elsewhere, and it may not 

 be a North American bird at all." 



The " History of North American Birds," by Baird, Brewer 

 and Ridgway, contains little additional information, except that 

 the bird here is made the type of the new name Collurio ludo- 

 vicianus, var. robustus, since it had been shown by Sharpe and 

 Dresser that the type of L. elegans Sw. was referable to some 

 Old World species, erroneously said to have come from the 

 " Fur-countries." The authors also assert that they " have no 

 reason to discredit the alleged localitj' of the specimen." 



Not being able to reconcile the statement of Prof. Baird, that 

 the specimen in question " is very decidedly different from any 

 of the recognized North American species," with the reduction 

 of it to a variety under ludovicianus, I, in 1878, named the bird 

 Lanius bairdi (Arch. Math. Naturv., iii, p. 330), a synonym 

 which, together with many others, Dr. Gadow has seen fit to 

 entirely ignore in the eighth volume of the " Catalogue of the 

 Birds in the British Museum " (1883). 



Finally, we have to mention the position taken by Dr. Coues, 

 who, in his " Birds of the Colorado Valley " (p. 546) " under the 

 circumstances, declines to take further notice of the supposed 

 species in the present work." "The circumstances" alluded to 

 seem to be the doubt as to the correctness of the locality attributed 

 to Gambel's specimen, as expressed already in his " Key." We are 

 compelled, however, to take exception to a statement contained 

 in the sentence commencing his account, though, as will be 

 found later on, we agree with him as to the result. He says : 

 "But Dr. Gambel, in 1843 (Proc. Phila. Acad., 1843, 261), 

 described a shrike, supposed to be from ' California,' which he 

 identified with Swainson's bird, and called L. elegans. 1 '' The 

 fact is, however, that the species which Gambel, in 1843, 



