24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 124 



Breeds on the mainland of southern British Columbia south to 

 northern Idaho and northern Washington, and in the Cascade Moun- 

 tains south to extreme northern California. 



Winters on Pacific Coast of southern California (Los Angeles 

 County), east to Texas (Langtry and Frijole), and occasionally to 

 North Carolina (Asheville), south to northeastern Mexico (Monterrey, 

 Nuevo Leon, and Victoria, Tamaulipas). 



McCabe and McCabe (1932) apparently were the first to point 

 out the distinctive characters of the small, grayish hermit thrushes 

 breeding in southern British Columbia, northern Washington, and 

 northern Idaho but did not assign a name to them. They did not at 

 that time have material to show the extension of the characters 

 southward in the Cascades to northern California. Oberholser (1932) 

 described the distinct characteristics of the birds from the Warner 

 Mountains of southern Oregon and the Cascades and noted that 

 these characteristics were shared by birds from central-southern 

 British Columbia. He named this subspecies "oromela" With addi- 

 tional material, McCabe and McCabe (1933, map) completed the 

 picture of distribution of races of hermit thrushes in the northwestern 

 United States and assigned the Cascades and northern Idaho, along 

 with southern British Columbia, to the race oromelus. This arrange- 

 ment agrees with findings in the present study. Later, Bishop (1933) 

 described the small gray population occupying part of the range of 

 oromelus in northern Idaho, naming it "dwighti." Although Ripley 

 (1964) includes this in the synonomy of auduboni, the present study 

 indicates that it is a synonym of oromelus. 



Munro and Cowan (1947) further confirm the distinctness of 

 oromelus in southern British Columbia and define its distribution 

 there more precisely. Their findings agree with those of the present 

 study, except that they apparently lacked specimens at the time 

 which showed the westward extension of oromelus characters to the 

 vicinity of the Pacific Coast north of Vancouver Island. 



Doubt has been cast on the applicability of the name oromelus 

 to the population in question because of the selection of the type- 

 specimen from the Warner Mountains of central-southern Oregon, a 

 locality at the extreme southern end of the range of this subpsecies. 

 McCabe and McCabe (1933) and Miller (1941a) pointed out the 

 intermediacy of the Warner Mountains birds between those from 

 farther north in the Cascades and slevini of the California coast; 

 and, although they had not seen the type-specimen of oromelus, 

 they questioned the use of this name for the more northern popula- 

 tion. Ripley (1964) considers oromelus a synonym of slevini. Both 

 Phillips (1962) and the present writer, after correspondence with 

 Robert Storer and the late Josselyn Van Tyne of the Museum of 



