HISTORY OF THE HYLOCICHL.E 23 



with the desired precision. Most of the later descriptions 

 upou which names have been based are perfectly intelligible ; 

 but the doubts which attach to several early accounts will 

 probably never be dispelled. The earliest claimant in this con- 

 nection appears to be the Unalashka Thrush, described with 

 varying orthography by Latham and Pennant, and subse- 

 quently the basis of Turdus aonalaschlcae of Gmelin. To enable 

 the reader to judge for himself how little can be made of the 

 accounts of these authors, Pennant's description is reproduced: 

 " Thrush with the crown and back brown, obscurely spotted 

 with dusky : breast yellow, spotted with black : coverts of the 

 wings, i)rimaries, and tail, dusky, edged with testaceous. Size 

 of a lark. Found on Unalascha.'' This description might be 

 supposed to refer to a young bird of the present species, still 

 in the speckled plumage ; but it is inadequate to the establish- 

 ment of a species. 



To pursue the subject of the Unalashka Thrush, we may next 

 notice a bird described by the celebrated traveler and natural- 

 ist, Peter S. Pallas, in the Zoographia Eosso-Asiatica, a work 

 which appears to have been actually printed in 1811, though 

 not published, nor generall}^ accessible, until 1831. This author 

 describes as a new species a certain 2Iuscicapa guttata^ from 

 the island of Kodiak, querying the Unalashka Thrush as syn- 

 onymous. But how much doubt he felt on this score is evident 

 from the fact that he also cites the same bird, with a note of 

 interrogation, as a synonym of his Turdus auroreus. The gen- 

 eral drift of the description of Muscicapa guttata indicates some 

 species of Turdus of the Hylocichla group, in the speckled plum- 

 age of the young; while the expressions '-uropygium rufo- 

 lutescens", " rectrices rufescentes ", would seem to jwint to the 

 Hermit Thrush. This identification was made by Dr. Cabanis 

 in the critical commentary accompanying Tschudi's Fauna 

 Peruana ; but the learned German ornithologist seems to have 

 soon felt the uncertainty attaching to this case, for he relin- 

 quished his Turdus guttatus, to bestow upon the Hermit Thrush 

 the name of T. ijallasii, by which it has of late years been gen- 

 erally known. While I admit the high probability of the per- 

 tinence of Pallas's " Muscicapa^'' to the i)resent species, I 

 scarcely think that we are required to adopt the name, especi- 

 ally in the uncertainty as to which of the varieties of the species 

 the name more particularly applies. 



Meanwhile, in 1812, Alexander Wilson described the Hermit 



