A REVISION OF THE WOOD-WARBLER GENUS 

 BASILEUTERUS AND ITS ALLIES 



By W. E. Clyde Todd 



Of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Peniisijlvania 



INTRODUCTION 



The studies in systematic ornithology in which the writer has 

 been engaged have served to show how far we still are from a proper 

 understanding of the status and relationships of sundry familiar 

 avian groups, and how many distributional problems concerning 

 them still remain to be solved. The identification of specimens often 

 involves extensive comparisons, and when it comes to the Revision 

 of a group as large as Basileuteims, the collection of no single insti- 

 tution is adequate for the purpose, and only by pooling all available 

 resources can such a study be carried out. Some return is surely due 

 those whose help must be sought before a paper of this kind can be 

 produced, while the time and labor devoted to the research in ques- 

 tion would seem to justify placing the hill results on record for the 

 benefit of other workers in the same field. 



In preparing the present revision the writer has handled no less 

 than 2,615 specimens, of which 231 are in the collection of the 

 United States National Museum, including that of the Biological 

 Survey. The remainder were drawn from the collections of the 

 following American institutions : The American Museum of Natural 

 History, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Carnegie Museum, 

 the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Field 

 Museum of Natural History, all of which contributed their full 

 series of this group. From abroad small but important loans of 

 material were made by the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesell- 

 schaft of Frankfort-am-Main, Germany, the Musee Polonais d'His- 

 toire Naturelle of Warsaw, Poland, the museum of the University de 

 Neuchatel, Switzerland, and the British Museum (Natural History) 

 of London, England. To the authorities of these several institutions 

 thanks are due for such courtesies extended. The writer is under 

 obligations also to Mr. Donald R. Dickey of Pasadena, Calif., for 

 the loan of certain pertinent specimens from Salvador, and to Dr. 



No. 2752.— Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 74, Art. 7 



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