366 NOTES ON EUROPEAN THRUSHES. 



species of Brebni, aud the simple fact that a name was established by 

 him has been sufficient reason to ignore it altogether, and to put it into 

 the synonymy without further investigation. This is not only injus 

 tice to Brehm's honest labor and his extreme power of discrimination, 

 but it has resulted in absolute injury to science. In the i)resent case, 

 for instance, I think that I am in i^osition to prove that Brehm was 

 correct, and that there exist two distinct species of Eing-Thrushes in 

 Europe, notwithstanding the fact that hardly a single European orni- 

 thologist of the present generation even dreams of it. 



That Turdus alpestris is no special x)lumage, referable to sex, age, 

 or season, is clear from the material at hand. There is first the speci- 

 men described and figured by Dresser. 1 have before me a beautiful 

 specimen, nearly an exact counterpart of Dresser's plate, also obtained 

 through W. Schlliter, and said to have come from Galicia. The label 

 indicates that it is a young male, aud there is nothing in the appear- 

 ance of the bird to contradict this statement. The bird is evident(y in 

 its first winter plumage; the bill is entirely dusky; the collar is brown- 

 ish and a little more distinct than in the bird figured by Dresser. This 

 is U. S. Nat. Mus. Ko. 56308. But there are two more specimens in 

 the same museum (Nos. 96C4 and 10G458), which are certainly old birds 

 in full summer lAmnage. One was collected June 7, the other August 8; 

 the former, an adult female, according to the label, browner; the latter, 

 indicated as a male, blacker. Both have yellow hills, pure white collars, 

 and the margins of the breast and abdominal feathers extremely broad, 

 notwithstanding the season and the worn condition of the i)lumage; 

 both have the central white spot to each feather, the whitish aspects of 

 the upper surface of the wing, aud the white under wing-coverts. In 

 other words, they are true and typical adult Turdus alpestris in summer 

 plumage. We have, consequently, a pair of young birds in the first 

 winter, and a pair of adult ones in summer. This proves beyond ques- 

 tion that we have not to do with a sexual or seasonal plumage of Tur- 

 dus torquatus proper. 



We will next have to x>rove that Brehm's Merula alpestris belongs 

 here. He has described the bird three times, but inasmuch as his de- 

 scriptions have been entirely overlooked, one of them, and that the 

 most important and elaborate one, being, besides, rather inaccessible to 

 most ornithologists, I take the liberty to present them in translation. 



The name occurs lor the first time in Isis, 1828, p. 1281, but without 

 description, which was not supplied until 1831, when we find it in 

 Brehm's Haudbuch, p. 377. I need only quote the following to show 

 that this is the bird meant: 



The breast and abdomen have a very variegated appearance, for each feather has, 

 besides the light margin, a large white median spot interrupted bj' a blackish shaft 

 stripe, the black consequently being forced towards the white margin. * * * This 

 species inhabits the Alps of Tyrol. * * * 



In the Isis for 1848, Brehm published some observations by the late 

 Count von Gourcy Droitaumont on the song of several German birds, 



